post.a.card.

Oregon.

2009-04-13T12:51:00.007-04:00

i imagine it went like this, two guys sitting in a boardroom in philadelphia:

"so, what if we built these giant wind mills and they could like, i don't know, harness energy ... what do you think???"

"barry, you're one crazy bastard, but i think you've got something there ... corporate will never go for it, though ..."

getting lost somewhere between Boise and Portland ... and in no hurry to find my way, again.

I used to be pretty clear on what was real and what I made up, but with everything going on in the world, none of that seems to matter, so I just decided to talk less and smile to myself more, so as not to add to the general confusion - Brian Andreas.

- Jessie

Breakfast at Elmer's

2009-04-13T12:46:00.005-04:00

where it never rains...

- Jessie

David L. Robbins Adulterer

2009-02-26T10:57:00.004-05:00

I found this while walking around Jackson, MS. I wonder if David L. Robbins still gets laid in this town.

Night lights ...

2008-12-26T01:05:00.014-05:00

really late at night during an intense snow storm ...

these were way too orange in color, i like them better in black and white, gives them a creepy, "Nightmare Before Christmas" feel ...

Andrew where are you???

2008-12-21T23:25:00.010-05:00

this came in the mail the other day and i'm still deciding if it says more about one, andrew carpenter, or the inner workings of the united states postal service.

this guy lived in our house a couple roommates back and apparently he's going bankrupt. so, not only is his life falling apart, at one point he was so pathetic he included directions to his room as part of his address ... and he never bothered to change it.

i know it's just a letter, but my ponderings since it came here are thricefold ... did the other roommates hate him so much he had to clarify that he lived "upstairs right" just so his mail would make it to him? ... is his new address "andrew carpenter, parent's house, basement" and if so, should I forward it there?? ...

did the postman chuckle at the poor bastard everytime he delivered mail here, thinking to himself, "my life is bad, i mean, i'm a postman for cripes sake, but this guy has it so much worse..." ???

so many questions...

2008-12-16T21:31:00.004-05:00

There was an immigration raid in southern Idaho this month, 16 men were arrested and most of them are about to be deported back to Mexico. I went to a vigil with the families in Boise to take photos and do some reporting for a project i'm working on.

I love that she wore these shoes, so cool and not at all appropriate ...

Meet Catherine.

2008-12-15T00:03:00.007-05:00

(AP Photo/Charlie Litchfield)

By JESSIE L. BONNER - Associated Press Writer
Edition Date: 12/13/08

PAYETTE, Idaho — For nearly a year, Catherine Carlson refused to pay the fine for driving with a suspended license because it was issued to both her and the man she used to be.

She went to jail four times over the ticket that includes both her legal name and the one she was born with, Daniel Carlson. She had surgery 28 years ago to become a woman, the gender she believes should have been assigned her at birth.

Carlson legally changed her name in the 1970s, but police and court records include both in this rural farming and ranching community east of the Snake River in southwestern Idaho.

"The ticket was the last straw," Carlson said.

Her fight against local authorities brought up questions Payette County had never answered before: where to house a transgender person in a jail with separate cells for men and women, which courthouse bathroom should she use, should the former male name be stricken from county records.

"This is a very conservative old-fashioned community, that's just the way it is. This is rural, small town Idaho. This is new to us," said Payette County Sheriff Chad Huff.

During the past year, Carlson repeatedly protested the $841 citation in court hearings on the case. Her struggle for acceptance since the sex-change operation on Thanksgiving Day 1980 has gone on much longer. She chose a life of solitude at a trailer park near the Payette city limits, rejecting a society she feels has rejected her.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/531/story/602863.html

Gulfport three years after Hurricane Katrina

2008-12-10T07:35:00.003-05:00

This week I am in Gulfport, MS and I have been blown away by how much rebuilding is yet to be done. The city is still working on cleaning out the storm drains near the beach. Many of the large houses that lined Highway 90 are gone and all that is left are the foundations. So here are some photos from my walk yesterday morning.

Stairs to nowhere

A building that will be rebuilt for historical purposes, I don't know the story.

The Gulfport Library

Josh O'Connor - Gulfport, MS

The ice man cometh...

2008-12-04T23:44:00.008-05:00

When I was little my godmother had a pond behind her place and when it froze over she would take us ice skating in the ridiculous cold that is a northern Idaho winter. I was the one who flew out to the middle of the ice, where it was weakest, where no one else would go, and I would wave at the line of cars that slowed along the highway to check out the stupid kid about to fall through.

So, naturally, the 26-year-old version of myself is thinking the sport cannot have changed that much and after three years of tropical living, I should probably give it another try.

I knew it was going to be bad when I saw the Russian skater team doing pirouettes in the middle of the rink, the families huddled on bleachers, the teenagers on really awkward first dates.

And then there was me, the blades of terror strapped to my feet, revisiting a former life and taking mental snapshots.

But then I realized that I would probably never see any of these people again, and I started taking real snapshots. It suddently hit me that one of the truly great things about getting older is that you really stop caring what people think.

So, I did a couple shaky laps, clinging onto the arm of a friend, avoiding glares from the Russian man-chics everytime we accidentally got in their way. The 16-year-old referee would glide by every five minutes to ask if we were alright and I would assure him that no, I wasn't having a seizure, I just hadn't done this in a while. - Jessie

shutter by moonlight ...

2008-12-01T02:29:00.006-05:00

Jessie - from the edge of a prairie in eastern Washington.

Georgia Aquarium: where fish are epic

2008-11-22T13:06:00.001-05:00

From John, in Atlanta:

Check out these videos from my recent trip to the Georgia Aquarium, which is the largest in the world (and they're damn sure going to keep it that way ... some aquarium in another country was going to be bigger, but they decided to build a new dolphin exhibit to keep up with the underwater Jones').

I sat in this room forever.

Doesn't this look like it's from another planet? Those seaweed things are garden eels!

Fall Awakening...

2008-11-22T00:21:00.003-05:00

From Jessie in Boise

I, like all warm-blooded people before me, know that satan invented cold weather because he got bored and decided there simply wasn't enough suffering. I don't do well in temps below 70, which means I've been cranky since August, but the colors have been nice lately and I'm going to try to take more photo ... and hope summer 2009 doesn't take its sweet time getting here.

This dude did not think my Walt Whitman comparisons were funny ... i wanted to tell him he shouldn't have worn that hat then, because he was totally begging for it ...

Rub a Dub Dub...

2008-11-22T00:09:00.006-05:00

I'm not sure why anyone would actually NEED an outdoor bathtub after the year 1812, but apparently the guy we're renting this house from did, and I can't stop thinking about it and how it got here and who the hell is supposed to use it, or if someone built it at one point and then realized there was a bathtub inside the house (whirljet, changed my life) ... and this is not even the strangest part about this place.

Oh, wait, what's that? you mean YOUR living room ISN'T covered with gold chickens?? only someone really odd would do that??

Fruit that requires a screw driver

2008-09-07T23:43:00.000-04:00

OKC -- A woman at a Vietnamese restaurant near my house gave the most convincing clue that the durian is an evil fruit that should not be eaten: "It's got spikes all over it, like, warning you to stay away," she said, before comparing the fruit's taste to vomit.

I first heard about the southeast Asian durain fruit at a dinner party, where a new friend and his wife (both white people from Ohio) said that the durain was the most delicious thing on earth. They said it was sweet, but not too sweet, and had the consistency of custard. Just be sure you crack it open on the porch, or outside your home, they said, because the fruit smells like a combo of rotten eggs and Fat Albert farts. They assured me that's a smell one can overcome, and that I would be hooked after one try.

Clearly these people have not taken human anatomy. Your nose is tied straight up with taste in your brain. And my nose is freaking huge.

My friend Jesse and I walked to Super Cao Nguyen, an Asian grocery store, on Saturday afternoon to buy a durian and try it out for ourselves. The fruit is sold out of a freezer, looks like an angry, rounded pineapple, and is pretty expensive. We picked the smallest one possible, and it weighed about 5 pounds and cost like $9. I didn't have any money in my wallet (convenient right?), so Jesse paid for it and carried it home. The durian is so spikey that, even when held in two plastic bags, it still stabbed him in the leg and litterally made him bleed. Ouch.

We got the fruit to my front porch and realized we didn't have much of a game plan for cracking it's spikey, wood-hard exterior. Here's a progression of tools used:

1. The knife: We used a small, sharp knife to stab at the fruit. It wasn't cerrated, but we still managed to saw across one side. We tried to pull it open, and just got stabbed in the palms. The fruit wouldn't budge.

2. The garden gloves: Used garden gloves to continue trying to pull the fruit apart. Not strong enough.

3. The stairs: Jesse picked the durain up and started banging it against the concrete stairs that lead up to my porch. "What are you doing?" I said. "Haven't you ever seen an otter?" Me: (Um, yes, in the Chicago Aquarium...) "Um, yes." Jesse: "They do this with mollusks, they put their little hands on the mollusk and then bang them into rocks." He continues banging, but all he does is get rid of a few spikes.

4. Screw drivers: Finally, we used two large screwdrivers to pry the fruit apart along the slit made in step one.

Immediately after the fruit opened, a stench filled the air. It was pretty sulfuric, like rotten eggs, but had a hint of otherworldlyness that for some reason reminded me of that scene in Gremlins when they all start hatching in the attic. Not that I have smellivision, I just imagine that's what it smells like.

As for the taste, I think Jesse was most accurate when he said it tasted like soggy, moldy onions. Whatever it was, it was sick, and I kept burping it up for at least 5 hours. After several washes, its smell still stuck to my hands. (It was unclear which kitchen utensils, if any, would be able to dig into the pockets of fruit beneath the spikes ... I didn't have a metal spork on hand, but maybe that would work).

Moral of story: trying new foods can be an adventure, but make sure you know what tools are required, and have a chaser and/or antacid ready.

--John

Whoa uh oh, the sweetest thing...

2008-08-01T02:41:00.000-04:00

Yeah, so U2 was playing in my head as I watched the following hook-up at like, 3 a.m. in the morning when I couldn't sleep. I live in an old converted hotel that overlooks downtown, so basically, when Boise parties till 3 a.m. on a flippin' Tuesday, so do I, cursing them and every emo-cover band that ever mastered the art of applying black eyeliner. But that night, when I heard these guys talking below my window, it actually wasn't so bad.

The guy, kind of nerdy, looking up songs on his laptop, sitting as FAR away from her as possible.

The girl, kind of edgy, bleached hair, the preying mantis to his worst fears.

The thing is, it worked for them, and when I wasn't feeling totally creepy for watching them for a couple seconds, I kind of felt like the universe was trying to make up for a past connection between two other people that somehow got missed.

Here's to the unexpected, may it keep biting us in the ass...

Jessie

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike, I want to ride ... ok, I'll stop

2008-08-01T02:06:00.002-04:00

A little taste of last year's action...

I think assimilation is pretty cool (if you're a communist), so when I moved to Boise I took a look around and realized I would either have to get a dog (beagle) or a bike (banana seat). The place reeks of granola (or "kashi" if you're a hipster) the type of place where mentioning "Wal-Mart" and "Starbucks" is equivalent to dropping the F-bomb (like Target treats its Indonesian factory workers ANY better) It took a while to catch on, mainly because I didn't really understand the "lingo" (note: cool word for "language") and everyone wouldn't shut up about their "times..."

Standing in the line at Java waiting for my coffee:

Dude, what's your "time" on that 4K? I got like 5:32, yeah, pretty good "time," better than my last "time"...

First, I went for the obvious -- these two grown men wearing spandex and complaining about their knees were part of some cult, that they got together on Wednesdays and did weird stuff involving clocks. But then, buying toilet paper at Winco:

"Hey Sarah! how's your time on the Eagle Run? I did about 20:13, not so bad huh?"

The homeless guy who smokes the cigarette butts off the sidewalk on 9th street:

"Hey Rusty (not even gonna tell you how he got the nickname) what "time" did you get walking from Fremont to Fairview?? I got about 20 minutes..."

Okay, it wasn't just me, it was like I was stuck in this Cindi Lauper music video where "Time after Time" was playing on vinyl (my new favorite thing) ... just circle after circle of some of one of the worst tunes (cough..George Michael...cough) produced during the 1980s. I finally broke down and asked someone about it (yes, Rusty the homeless guy). He explained like so, if you live in Boise, this weird city of hippies and Capitol types in suits, sooner or later you look around and realize everyone is either training for a triathalon, or improving their "time" on some local trail.

I got my road bike when I got back from Guatemala (where owning a bike is kinda like owning a Suzuki) and there it was, in my apartment staring at me (awkward).

And here I was, in the apparent biking capital of the world. all I wanted to do was throw on some sweats and hop in a rickshaw (preferably hauled by a dog (yeah, that's right, the tables have TURNED). I've tried to live by a non-conformist code, sometimes succeeding (nothing but cold cereal for an entire month) sometimes failing miserably (scrunchie phase, circa 1980s) but I felt I just couldn't ride my bike in a place where people actually gave you a thumbs up when you passed by and Saturdays, man, Saturdays were like a parade of goofy smiles riding Huffys and Schwins ... it was just embarrassing.

But then, there was the bike race of the year had enveloped my apartment complex, some mess of an event called the "Twilight Criterium" and it was me against the biking world as I realized the entryway to my apartment had been blocked off.

So, I did what anyone would have done in the same situation.I sat at my window mapping out the trajectory of a lugee for a few seconds, then I grabbed my bike, waded through the massive crowd (cooler and involving more sweat than it sounds) and rode to the other side of town to a really nice bike trail called the Boise Greenbelt, and for two hours I shifted gears, balanced just right on the curves, and tried to pretend I hadn't just started drinking the Kool-Aid.

Jessie

Going to East Africa?

2008-06-16T09:01:00.004-04:00

If any of you are thinking of a trip to East Africa, particularly Tanzania, I recommend you get in touch with a friend of mine, Renson. He is very kind, speaks English, and is having trouble keeping his business going this season because the flow of tourism is so low. I assume this has to do with recent violence in neighboring Kenya. In any event, if you're planning a trip to that part of the world, please contact him. He does tours of Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, and all of the safaris.

Here's his business site. (http://www.africaadventuretreks.com/) Or e-mail him at info [at] africaadventuretreks.com.

Quick Swahili lesson: safari=journey, rafiki=friend, simba=lion.

That's him in the picture above.

John

Rodeo Disco: the circle of life

2008-06-08T12:02:00.000-04:00

OKLA CITY -- Country bars and gay bars are like 4 millimeters apart on the great wheel of nightlife.

This is based on a recent visit to Club Rodeo, where, as you'll see in this video, a bunch of dudes in cowboy hats and nut-hugger jeans jump around beneath a disco ball to "YMCA." If you listen closely, you'll hear my boyfriend say, "Oh, goddamn!" in the middle of it all.

The line-dancing bar is seriously a two-step away from being a gay disco. Everything's about the clothes: who has the coolest cowboy boots or the biggest hat. The urinals are closer together than any straight person (or me, for that matter) could possibly be comfortable with. And guys are the center off attention on the dance floor: they wear pastel colored shirts, twirl around and whip their heads from side to side like they're in a tango competition.

The music isn't too far off, either. Club Rodeo is as big as an airport hanger, and while people wait to see live bull riding, they dance to everything from Kenny Chesney to Kanye. There's a laser light show, obviously, and the tracks that hold the lights lowers down close to the floor for the hip-hop, and pulls up high for slow country tunes ... kind of going into roller rink mode.

Of course, while women dance together openly, waiting for some cowboy to step in, you'd never see two men dancing together. But plop some of those homeboys down in a gay bar, and I'm sure there'd be a few boot heels clickin.

John

And they call the thang (club) rodeoooo

2008-06-08T11:15:00.001-04:00

OKLA CITY -- Sometimes the best exploring is done in your own city ... especially if you happen to live in a weird-ass place like Oklahoma, where you can find a country dancing club that hosts live bull riding next to its dance floor.

No, not mechanical bull riding, which you might find in bars elsewhere. LIVE dust kicking, ball pinching, arm breaking bull riding. On Friday and Saturday nights, Club Rodeo has it on the half-hour. Everyone stops dancing to come watch a bunch of amateur dudes compete for $300 ($600 on Saturday because no one had scored Friday).

It's insane.

At the 11:30 ride on Saturday, some guy took off on a bull named Lickety Split. Watch the video to find out how well he did, but let's just say that he was holding his arm so tightly after the race that it looked like he needed a trip to the ER.

Which brings up a good point my friends made: What's $300 compared to an ER visit?

I want to know more about these guys who put it all on the line for some sliver of glory, or a piece of their rent check. Maybe they're trying to make it onto the big, pro rodeo circuit. Maybe they just get a kick out of it.

Either way it's pretty fascinating.

(Tip if you go: only drink beer in a bottle, and put your thumb over the top when the bulls are jumping. They kick up a lot of dust ... and since said dust smells like manure, you don't wanna drink that.)

John

Switchbacks in the concrete jungle

2008-06-01T22:36:00.003-04:00

SAN FRAN -- The hills in San Francisco are crazy steep. Like ski hill steep. Like tear an ACL muscle/strain a quad steep.

The hill where you'll find Lombard Street (the famous "windeyest" road in America), drops at a 27 percent grade, for example. Neighborhoods are named things like Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill, mostly so idiot tourists will know to walk around them rather than pass out during the climb. Property rates on Telegraph Hill were supposedly super low before the automobile, because only poor people were willing to walking up and down it. Take the dramatic city hills and valleys, and thrown in some serious Pacific fog, and you get a range of micro climates in the city based on the topography. One resident told me neighborhood temperatures can vary by as much as 20 degrees, just because hills hold the weather.

Sometimes, these hills have little stair steps to help you out with the climb, but often you're left to make your own path.

John and I figured out the hills are easier if you take a little tip from skiing and hiking -- and cut the grades down with some switchbacks. It makes you look a bit like a fool, but hey, I was already carrying a camera around my neck and a big yellow backpack. Not much to lose.

And I guess that's the exact technique that makes Lombard Street tolerable for cars. The hairpin curves of the road dilute the grade down to 16 percent, according to a National Geographic travel guide.

John

Good Vibrations (of the slightly scary variety)

2008-05-31T16:38:00.000-04:00

The Golden Gate Bridge is 8,981 feet across, and you really have to walk it to get a feel for how enormous it is.

When you do, the giant red structure, which seems more like artwork than engineering from afar, becomes a real working, moving, imperfect thing. You notice scratches and big dull spots in the "International Orange" paint. You hear the roar of traffic.

And, most of all, you feel the vibrations. The road is suspended from cables, and those cables vibrate "like piano strings," as one passer-by put it. No shock, really, since the bridge is built to handle 27.7 feet of sway in the case of an earthquake or disaster.

(some info for post came from National Geographic travel guide to San Fran ... which I highly recommend)

Bark! (get off my stinkin dock)

2008-05-31T16:26:00.000-04:00

SAN FRAN -- At Pier 39 in San Francisco, you'll find a whole gaggle (or whatever) of sea lions. They bark at tourists and each other as they slide around looking for resting space on the pier. They're quite social, and snuggle on top of each other in piles. The sea lions come and go on their own, and, according to a sign in the area, the pier's owners actually abandoned a section of docks since it's become such a social gathering spot for the animals.

We stood by the pier for 20 minutes or so just watching the sea lions shove each other around. They have very different personalities. The fat males (you can tell they're males by the lumps on their foreheads) seem grumpy and territorial. Smaller, fuzzier sea lions stayed far away from the aggressors, content to sleep like sardines in a row.

I would have been one of the lazy sea lions. I mean, the whole point of the stop is to rest and chill out ... no need for all that alpha male drama.

John

2007-12-01T18:26:00.000-05:00

They say that when you live in a place long enough, it becomes part of you. When it comes to Guatemala, I can only hope so. This place meant a lot to me, on many levels, and now I'm headed back to the states to see my family for the first time in a year. I came here, for the most part, as a complete moron, in a culture I knew nothing about and a language I was just beginning to understand. But, after a while, I found myself drawn to everything about this country, finding things that reminded me of parts of myself that I had forgotten while I was in such a hurry to graduate from college, get a job and take myself seriously.

I threw all that away when I went all Hunter S. Thompson and moved to Central America.

This is my final Post-a-Card until my next trip. I look back on Guatemala and what I've posted here, and I see a lot on the highlights from this experience, the moments where I felt such freedom and happiness about quitting my job and leaving everything to come here. I left out the parts where I literally collasped under the weight of the decision I'd made.

But here's the thing.

I realize now that the most valuable thing I'm going to take from all of this -- minus the 12 bottles of hot sauce in buried in my luggage -- is this:

I will probably never chase after the white picket fence, so many of my friends are married and getting jobs, leaving old ones, buying property so they can settle down and find a place for themselves in this messed up world, and while I think it's great for them, it also freaks me out, it's a small part of why I left, I had no idea what I wanted or where I wanted to go. I never really found a place that felt like home for me. Some people might have gotten a shrink. I moved to Central America. And now I'm leaving, a lot poorer, a little smarter, less in sync with the English language than I'd care to admit, but feeling a whole lot better about where I'm headed after realizing this:

It doesn't matter.

Anything can happen at this point, and I'm really okay with that, mostly because I've decided that "home" is not the name of a city, it's not even the place where you were born or grew up, home is an idea, it is a place where you can be yourself, it is where you are most happy, surrounded by people and places and music and food and a life that you love.

And for a while, Guatemala was home for me.

Yes, I'm still alive...

2007-11-18T17:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while, and a Post-A-Card couldn't even cover half of what has happened in the past couple of weeks, so I've decided to delight, no ASTOUND, you with a small portion of the photos Lexey and Tristan took when they came down to visit. Tristan and I were reporting on a story and Lexey took time off from work to meet up with us last week. I've had a blast traveling through Central America, but it's also been difficult realizing that when you've been gone as long as I have, it's pretty easy to fall off the map. Friends don't write as much. Your inbox isn't as full as it used to be. Your name comes up and someone says "Oh yeah, I remember her, isn't she still in Mexico or something?"

Basically, in times like these, you find out who's got your back.

There's Talia Buford, my best friend in the entire world, a girl who paid international postage to send me my favorite candy from the states and wish me an early Happy Thanksgiving. And then there's Lex and Tristan. Both of them offered major support when I decided to come to Guatemala, and I felt so lucky to have them both here to help me finish up my trip. They also happen to be two of my favorite photographers ever and you can check out their photo blogs here and here.

Here's some random shots from our travels. Enjoy.

Lake Atitlan, where we spent most of our time after leaving Antigua, the city where I've been hanging out for the past four months.
Getting ready to catch a shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, the city where the boats dock and take people across the lake. The story was in Santa Cruz, which is the only village on the lake that is located up in the mountains. We hiked 20 minutes everyday just to get to it.
Your basic reaction to what Guatemalans call "transportation." Just imagine being shoved in a van with 16 other people and the kind of ass-hurting that comes when driving 50 miles per hour on cobblestone streets and you get the picture.
Seriously just happy to be alive...

Less than ideal working conditions, but we made it work.

Lexey having another one of her "SERIOUSLY, THIS IS WHERE YOU'VE BEEN LIVING?!?" moments ... there were a lot of them.
Documentation of the exact moments Tristan and I realized we no longer have jobs...
WARNING: Traveling with photographers subjects you to being photographed AT ALL TIMES.
I don't know Karate, but I know CRAZY...

We helped the world A LOT during this trip.

When did you get your nose pierced???

Tristan heading back to D.C.

Why am I going back to the states again?

oh yeah.

The Kite Runners...

2007-11-02T13:42:00.000-04:00

Halloween was cool, but the real holiday came the next day, on November 1, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. We caught a chicken bus out to a small village outside Antigua and witnessed one of the most bizarre rituals I've ever seen in my entire life.Let's just say it involved a cemetary, a crowd of Guatemalans, and kites the size of school buses. People honor their dead by flying the kites over the graves, and the tails on the end of the massive structures are made up of pieces of cloth, they include the messages families send to loved ones who have passed on.

It was beautiful, even if it seemed a little morbid.

The graves provided pretty good leverage for the runners, who had to pull the strings and keep them up in the air. Tristan's best "Where the Hell Am I?" look.

We do things a little differently here...

2007-10-31T13:18:00.000-04:00

Okay, so Halloween managed to make it's way here thanks to the tourists, we didn't exactly have access to pumpkins, but my buddy Tristan got into town this week and we headed to the market and bought some produce to carve up. Sure, they're not exactly ... pretty, but you get the point and they made the dimly lit bar where I've been working for the past month a little more attractive ... sort of.

I only have about a month left here in Central America and even though I came here with every intention of experiencing how people really live in Guatemala, it was really cool to have a piece of home here. I passed out candy at the bar, Tristan somehow squeezed into a child's size 4 teenage mutant ninja turtle costume he found at the market, and a good time was had by all.

About 50 years ago, my parents were married on this holiday, it's always been my favorite, this year it didn't dissapoint.

Geovani rockin' his costume.
The closest thing to a pumpkin we could find.
Geovani and his brother taking a day off from working the streets to just be kids.

Roberto, aka, Britney Spears, or a really ugly prepubescent girl ... depending on how you look at it.

2007-10-19T14:32:00.000-04:00

I've already written about Geovani in past Post-a-Cards. he's a local kid who comes in every night and keeps me company while I work. Our agreement is a simple one. I give him free refills on glasses of "leche" and in return, he helps me entertain/make fun of the hundreds of tourists who pass through the Black Cat hostel. at some point we became friends and everybody pretty much knows that whenever I work, there's a spot at the bar reserved for Geovani, who poses for pictures and makes them laugh. Everyone who meets me, at some point or another, meets Geovani. There was Derek and Chris, the Marines from Texas who would give him their leftover pizza when they were done with it. There was Elad (pictured above) the Israeli who was startled to find out Geovani was smarter than him. There was Jim, the local guy who talked to Geovani for a while, bought chocolate from him, and then shoved him away when he got annoyed with him.

The kid is dressed better than most of the other beggars, and I swear sometimes it's like he's a 30-year-old stuck inside an 11-year-olds body, but for some weird reason I connected with him.

Last night my manager was watching while I poured Geovani a glass of milk and bought him a bottle of water to take home. I thought she was going to yell at me, that I'd get in trouble once she realized i'd been feeding this kid, and if we were to add up all the shots of "leche" I've given him, it would most likely sustain a small pueblo for a couple months, but she didn't.

She told me she knew the kid, knew where he lived, that he was one of like 16 kids and they had a really rough life, their mother suffers from some kind of mental disability.

People ask me about Geovani all the time, they can't tell if he's just another one of the beggars who roam through Antigua or if he's my little brother. The truth is, I've built somewhat of an extended family down here, and somewhere along the way Geovani became part of it.

I'm almost done working at the hostal, and I'll be leaving Guatemala in about a month, the other night it struck me how much I'm going to miss him.

Think Michelle Pfeiffer in dangerous minds ... Guatemalan style

2007-10-19T13:59:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I got kicked out of a classroom, I was always the loud kid, the one who laughed just a little bit too much ( I have hazy memories of telling one substitute she was two fries short of a happy meal) And here I'm 24 years old, getting kicked out of class again by my friend, Simon, who told me I was disrupting his "ninos" a little bit too much with my camera and it'd probably be best if I left so they could concentrate.

In this case, "the class" is a group of underpriveleged Guatemalan kids who go to this small ghetto school where my friend Simon has been volunteering as a teacher for the past week. There are no books, these kids barely have enough money to buy the cheap notebooks they scribble in. I asked Simon if I could tag along, he's been telling me about his "ninos" for a while and I was really curious about a school system that takes on traveling tourists as instructors, so desperate they are, they'll take on anyone, even if it's just for a few days.

Most of the people who travel through Antigua are tourists in their early twenties, people just looking for a good time that consists of getting drunk every night and stumbling back to the hostal where I work ( I swear to God if one more person asks me where they can get some cocaine I'm going to start selling blocks of talcum powder)... My point is, most of the tourists my age sleep until noon or so and then yell at the bar staff because breakfast is only served until 11 a.m. and nothing sounds better than a big greasy Guatemalan breakfast when you wake up at 1 p.m. and with a hangover.

Simon gets up every day at 7:30 to go spend four hours with these kids, and it blew me away. When the girl he was traveling with got bored and moved onto San Pedro, Simon stayed in Antigua because he had made a commitment to the school and his "ninos." Getting to know him and spending time at the school was one of the best parts of this trip, I mean, sure, I spent most of the time making fun of Simon's accent and telling Pedro, the kid in front row, all the answers on his test and Simon spent most of our time together yelling: "Woman, has anyone ever told you that you are CRAZY!!"

I told him yes, many, many times.

But we had each other's back the other night, when this drunk Guatemalan guy stumbled into the bar and asked Simon what he was doing in Latin America. Simon told him he was teaching at a local school and Mr. Drunk Guy essentially told him he was a piece of crap for spending only a week with these kids and then leaving. He told Simon that if he'd really wanted to make a difference he'd stay for a year, and then he pointed at the dinner Simon was eating and told him that the kids in his class could probably live for a week off of what the meal had cost.

I told him to shut up.

He started yelling, reminding me that this was his country and I was just a stupid gringa and I couldn't talk to him like that. I couldn't help but see there was a very visible line that had formed, the division between the white people who travel here and the Guatemalans who have grown up in this country hating us and our "priveleged" lives. It's division I've experienced one too many times. The drunk guy eventually bowed out, got into a fight when another guy who told him to leave me alone. I left the bar until they were gone. Simon had already stalked out, the drunk guy made him feel like crap about himself and what he was doing here. But the next morning, the drunk guy somewhere else sleeping off his hangover, and here was Simon, getting up at 7:30 to go spend the day with his "ninos."

I made sure he knew that I was really proud of him and that he should feel really good about himself and what he was trying to do here. I tried to remind him that guys (ladies, you too) say really stupid things when they're drunk and for the most part, people can only make you feel bad if you let them.

a nice shot of Pedro the "special" kid who sits in the back and tries to stay awake.

Simon, feeling good again.

2007-09-24T14:11:00.000-04:00

"Sometimes music is the only thing that makes sense, play it loud enough, it keeps the demons at bay."

I think we forget how important life is, how sometimes all we have to do is just sit back and take it all in and stop pummeling through it like we can't wait to get it over with. It's sad, because most of the time we only do this when we've reached our lowest points or we're really frustrated or tired or disappointed with how our lives are going.

What does this have to do with a drum corp of Guatemalans?

The past week was rough, composed of the kind of "My So Called Life" moments that make you just want to curl up in bed and shut out the world (let's just say there's been a lot of "journaling" lately) but this morning I heard this band outside my window and realized I hadn't taken any photos of the drum corps who walk through Antigua. I stopped feeling sorry for myself, grabbed my camera and ran down the street, and then I shot for about an hour, the drumming vibrating in my chest, the complete energy of everything hitting me straight on, the kids in the street stunned silent, proud mothers taking pictures of their kids and bringing them water in between sets. I watched a man take his abuelita by the hand and lead her across the street after the band passed by, both waiting to cross out of respect for the music, and then it struck me how happy I was to be alone, because I was so choked up I just sat there and stared, so grateful I got to see it.

I send photos home and I imagine what people see, what it's like to view Guatemala like I once did, as a poverty-stricken, war torn country with little to offer the people who live there.

I find myself wanting to use images to explain just how wrong I was, that these people are some of the richest people I have ever met, the love of life they carry is profound, something you couldn't buy even if you wanted to. I find myself wanting to soak up as much from them as I possibly can. What I saw today was the same drum corp that goes through the streets of Antigua every single week, and in the crowd I saw the same people I see everyday in the market, in bookstores, in cafes, but I took more away from just siiting their watching them through my camera lense then they will ever know or understand. The drum corp jam is like most things in life, at first it looks really hard, complicated, like something you could never do in a million years.

But then one day you pick up a snare drum, or one afternoon you rock out to a Stevie Wonder album, everyday gets easier and you learn a little bit more with each step, and pretty soon you're jamming right along with them.

What I saw today is going to stay with me for a while. It reminded me that what I'm going through or experiencing isn't all that important in the grand scheme, there are more important things in this world, there is life going on all around you, even when you don't take the time to stop and notice it.

No phone? How about a conch shell and a mountain top

2007-09-20T17:54:00.000-04:00

9/13/07
IMORONA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, I’m writing by the flicker of candle light from a village called Imorona, where a group of farmers sell vanilla on the international market. When I arrived this morning, ass-chapped and sore from a jolting ride in the back of a pickup truck, I climbed a dirt staircase up a mountain to take a in the lay of the land. It is absolutely paradise here. A river snakes through the feet of mountains, leaving the lime-green patchwork of rice paddies in its path. The mountains are still covered, mostly, in dense forest. And the ocean is a kaleidoscope of blues. It is striking to me how untouched this place is, at least by outside influence. Last night, for example, word came to town that a tsunami had hit southeast Asia … and that the wave might be headed here. That news came from a concerned relative who drove here, several hours, on a motorcycle, just to deliver it. Once it arrived, a moderate panic set in. About 500 people, the mayor told me, assembled in the middle of the night on top of the mountain to assess the situation in sure safety from any rising water. The planning of that meeting is what’s particularly awesome. Did they call everyone on the telephone? Of course not, they don’t those. Did they interrupt the usual television programming? Nope, no electricity here. So an official climbed the mountain, high above the town, with a conch shell in hand. When he reached the peak, he blew hard into the foot of the shell: “OOOO-EEEEEE!!!!!” He let out a high-pitched call that all the town could hear. Everyone scampered up the mountain right away to see what was the matter.
In an interview today, the mayor imitated it for me. The shell is the “telephone Malagache,” he said. It’s so cool that places like this still exist. Love, John

"Answer me these questions three ..."

2007-09-20T17:36:00.000-04:00

9/13/07
IMORONA, MADAGASCAR – Dear Dave –
Hours on bus: 14
Rivers to cross, without bridges: 6

[When you don’t have bridges, men with 50-foot bamboo poles push you across your truck across rivers on a shaky raft. The hollow poles pushing off the river bottom sound like plastic straws digging into slurpies. – SUTTER]

15 people, me, 14 hours, and the back of a Toyota

2007-09-20T17:18:00.000-04:00

9/13/07
IMORONA, MADAGASCAR – Dear Ben, I got in to this small village this morning after riding for a total of 14 hours in the back of a pickup truck, on a sideways wooden bench, crammed next to 15 other people. It was crazy. We were so close together, our arms were thatched together like palm fronds on a mat. Our feet and legs were like tangled tree roots. All the while, the truck is jerking back and forth with the force of an old wooden rollercoaster. We were driving so slow. Bicycles were seriously passing us because the roads were so bad. They looked like this: (insert craggy line here). The back of the truck was covered with a metal cage and a green tarp, to protect us from the rain. That was nice, but it also made the space fill up with exhaust as the truck heaved its way through muddy red ruts as deep as my thighs. It was worth it though, for one reason – the music. Just as I would think I was going to puke on/kill everyone around me, my fellow passengers would start singing. I couldn’t understand a word, but the soulful harmonies lifted me right off of that bruising seat and put me somewhere wonderful, a place where I could see the magnificent beaches and misty mountains on our path. A place where the ocean breeze snuffed out the tail pipe fumes. The world is terribly unfair sometimes, and we should do everything we can to change that, but the power people have to life themselves out of shitty situations, if only in mind, is truly amazing. Love, John

Malagasy love them some pro wrestling ...

2007-09-20T00:53:00.000-04:00

MAROANTSETRA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, It’s not very PC to say this, but Madagascar makes me totally feel bi-polar sometimes. Earlier this afternoon, I was so discouraged and lonely – it felt like none of my best-laid plans were coming through. Then I went for a walk at twilight (random sidenote: the French call that “la nuit americainne”) and I couldn’t stop smiling. The people here in Maroantsetra are beautiful, friendly and love WWE wrestling. Random combo, I know. Keep reading.
My walk took me not far from my bungalow, just down a dirt road to the local market, which I can still hear buzzing with chatter and motorcycle engines. When I got to the market, I made eye contact with a big woman who was sitting on the ground in front of rows of dead fish (also on the ground). She was frowning. I said “Hello” in Malagasy, “Hope your day is good.” Her eyes lit up – so fast. Then she flashed an enormous, toothy smile and greeted me in return, nodding her head in thanks. From that simple instand on, I was back on a high. I bought a bundle of bananas (10 cents), three blocks of fresh bread (30 cents) and two bottles of water ($1.50) … all for tomorrow’s car trip, assuming I get to go.
On the walk back, I took in the smells of raw fish, charcoal smoke and earthy rice dust with joy. When I got back here to the bungalow at Hotel Ebene, the owner was watching a WWE wrestling DVD from 2005. In the program, a guy with a flattop, wearing jean shorts and bulging bare chest showing, beat a older dude in a skimpy speedo. We all muttered “oohs” and “uhhs” together as they traded body slams on the tiny TV. I was the only one who laughed at flattop man when he paused the match to pump air into the tongues of his Reebok Pump shoes. I hated watching WWE in the US, but here it was hilarious and wonderful, because it was something we all could understand. Love, John

Learning a little patience (Mora Mora)

2007-09-20T00:44:00.000-04:00

MAROANTSETRA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, I’m sitting outside my palm-roof bungalo in another NE Madagascar town that looks like it is a cross between something on “Lost” and the Wild West … they use more wood here than elsewhere. So far, this stay has had just one goal – figure out how to get 50 miles south of here, to reach the village I plan to write about. Easier said than done, as between me and Imorona (the village) lies a stretch of road that is muddy year-round, to the point that trucks sink down to their wheel wells. It is crisscrossed by six rivers with no bridges. And it bounds up and down several mountains along the coast. “Bush taxis” normally run the route, but the one that starts in this town is broken. So, tomorrow at 6 a.m., I will find out by phone whether I’ve been able to sneak my way into the bed of a private truck, as cargo. There will be a sideways bench (wooden) for me to sit on, if it’s a go. My ass is going to be super sore, because the trip is 12 to 24 hours, I’ve heard, depending on the road conditions. If I don’t make it on this truck another probably won’t leave until Friday, which is too late for me. If nothing else, hopefully this trip will leave me with a heaping dose of go with the flow-style patience. Here, they give that a phrase: “mora mora.” And everyone seems to have it down.
I’m doing my best to smile my way through the hiccups. Love, John
PS: a rooster just walked behind my chair.

My stuff is moving today, in Oklahoma

2007-09-20T00:39:00.000-04:00

John M. and I are moving to a new house in Oklahoma City ... this is a diagram of our old place, which John moved out of on the 8th. The landlord found a buyer and offered up some money to cut the lease short ... Sappy, I know, but it's weird to be moving while you're on the other side of the world. Drew this on the beach at sunset. -- John

Zen and the art of watching chameleons

2007-09-20T00:34:00.000-04:00

SAMBAVA, MADAGASCAR – Dear John, Went running on the beach in Sambava to clear my head. Scheduling woes, and you know me, planning stuff is not my cup of tea. I wanted to get out to this awesome national park because I’m stuck in this town until Sunday, but I don’t have time. Ah well.
On the run, I saw a man and pregnant woman herding cattle (zebu). The hoof-prints made the running interesting, and I I was laughing out loud by myself about the whole scene. I ran so much that I got blisters and cuts all over the bottoms of my feet – woops. The beach is a little more like glass shards than powder. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot accomplished on this trip to vanilla land. I’m just frustrated that I have to wait around for this one tour, and I’m kind of – OK, really – lonely here. I want my head to stop spinning. Good thing there are insanely beautiful ocean and mountain view are here to help me chill out a bit. Nature is about the only thing that’s keeping me sane here … oh, and I saw the COOLEST chameleon the other day, walking across the beach one slow, controlled step at a time, his eyes darting around in all directions before he’d put a new foot down in the sand. He made it to a mini-palm tree and rested in the shade (eyes still darting) while I watched the waves. Love, John

Vanilla trip begins

2007-09-20T00:30:00.000-04:00

SAMBAVA, MADAGASCAR -- Dear Fam: I’m up in northeast Madagascar, the world’s best region for growing vanilla. When you walk down the streets in Sambava and Antalaha, the smell of vanilla drying in the tropical sun hits you with a force strong enough to stain your hair and clothes for the day. The smell isn’t everywhere, it just pops out of the windows of the concrete bunkers where workers sort dried beans with the speed and precision of Vegas card dealers. They put beans in various tubs and piles, corresponding to a number of categories: length, color, moisture, weight, texture and, above all, smell. The smell was one of the things that’s surprised me the most about vanilla production … because it’s grows. Opening a bottle of McCormick’s vanilla extract makes you think of cookies and ice cream and summer and such. Dried vanilla smells like raisins. Maybe caramel. And both are kind of alcoholic-moldy.
Once the vanilla is properly dried and sorted (that takes nine months) then it is exported for the most part, to you in the U.S. People here don’t use the stuff.
Wishing you love from a Chinese restaurant that smells like caramel raisins. JOHN

2007-09-16T19:26:00.000-04:00

I am constantly blown away by the kids I meet here, most of them know more about life than they really should. Geovani is 11 years old and he walked up to the bar last night like he owned the place. He was selling these chocolates wrapped in foil gold coins and I told him I didn't want any but if he was tired he could sit at the bar and I'd get him some hot chocolate. Just as I was thinking that it probably wasn't the best place for him to be hanging out, i realized he'd already lived a harder life than any of the european tourists i serve during happy hour ... and he could probably drink them under the table.

He's originally from Nicaragua, the coins are only his side job, he told me. He drums in the street with his father and brother most of the time. My mouth dropped and i realized he was part of the family of street performers i photographed when i first got here. I showed him the photos I'd taken of his dad and his brother and he told me he remembered watching me shoot them while he took a rest. Then he swigged down his cocoa like a man, wiped his mouth on his flannel sleeve and grabbed his coins before walking out the door.

I went back to work, and so did he.

It was kind of a rough night before he wandered in, and i realized after he left that i felt happy just knowing i would be able to find him again, two streets to the right and one street up, and there he'd be, drumming in the same spot i left him two months ago. on the face of it, life has dealt kids like him a tough blow, but i think that's too easy, the passing glance "Oh that's so sad" before you walk into a store and plop down 3 bucks on a latte, i guess the way i make it okay in my over-contemplative head is to think about it like this: they are no better or worse off than me, they've simply been faced with a different path, and sure it might be tought than mine, but I think they'll be better people because of it.

Just another pinata milestone...

2007-09-16T18:57:00.000-04:00

[9-15-07]

Mom-

Carlito, the son of my Spanish instructor, turned 10 years old yesterday and I finally got to see why she's been dragging me all over town this week to pick out his party supplies. She was really worried about the pinata. Carlito wanted spiderman and she couldn't find one and she flipped. I didn't see what the big deal was until she pulled out the photo album and showed me. There he was, Carlito, age 3, using a small stick to beat the crap out of a life size paper Snoopy.

Carlito, age 4, pinata in the shape of a pokeman action figure.

Carlito, age 5, he and his friends surround a pinata in the shape of superman.

The carnage continued ages 6 thru 9.

So, we went out on Friday and found the kid a spiderman in the market, bartering an old women down to 30 quetzales. Alenka, my tutor, asked me to take photos at the party and i was really jacked about it because we've been going through a rough patch, the kind only people who spend four hours a day with each other can go through.

I could only stay at the party for a little bit because I had to go to work, and I was kind of happy I had an excuse to leave.

It was a wierd feeling, but a familiar one, it's that awkward place where people have welcomed you into their lives, but there's also a certain distance because of the circumstances, i mean, to this woman i am "a job" and it was hard not to look around the room and realize i was the only american. You kind of get the same vibes when you're a journalist, when you hang out with people long enough they invite you into their lives, but no matter how much you blend in, it's you who's holding the notebook, or in this case, a camera, and you're the one who has to go back to the office and stare at your computer screen until it makes sense.

But all of this aside, I left the party realizing I wanted to stay, knowing that these people had let me into their lives not because i was a journalist or an American or someone who could do something for them like put them in the newspaper, for about an hour I was simply part of the family. - Jessie

White guy hiking town to town in rural Madagascar

2007-09-16T15:11:00.001-04:00

[9/16/07 IMORONA, Madagascar. Dear Christian, I was reminded of our biking trip in the Appalachian Mountains yesterday. I walked a few hours down dirt road through the jungle and rice fields to get to this town, Mananara, on Madagascar’s east coast. Let me assure you that a white dude hiking alone with a massive pack is way more shocking to onlookers in Madagascar than we were – in spandex – to Appalachian people in Virginia and North Carolina. Kids saw me coming first. Some rushed to tell their parents of my arrival. “White person! White person!” Some said it with excitement, others with fear, running back into a bamboo home with arms flailing overhead. One kid ran out to the road, pointed at me, then screamed at the top of his lungs and spun around in circles. Then pointed again. He was excited, like I was Oprah or something. Although I guess she would stand out less. I tried to always flash a smile, no matter how I was received in these villages. I offered up a few Malagasy greetings (“any news in your family?”) Usually more shrieks followed. People here are way more excitable than they are back home. Commonplace stuff causes quite a stir. The animals play along with the game, too. Every morning, the rainforest shrieks with delight when the sun starts coming up. I imagine the frogs, birds and chameleons as cartoons, yelling “Oh my God, the sun, the sun!! Hurry, hurry, wake up. It’s the sun! It’s back!!” Hopefully I can bring some of that enthusiasm back to the states with me. This was all going through my head while I trudged down the hot and muddy road, thinking in my head “Just keep walking, just keep walking.” Like Dorey, the inquisitive but confused fish on Finding Nemo. –SUTTER]

The 5 a.m. pollinator

2007-09-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

[9/16/07 IMORONA, Madagascar. Dear Grandma, People here in northeast Madagascar are dedicated, gentle and quick. They have to be to succeed on some of the best vanilla plantations in the world. Six days a week, Séance wakes up at 5 a.m. to pollinate the orchid flowers on vanilla vines. The climb up the side of a steep and misty mountain. He walks for an hour – down a dirt road, down a cool stream and through a rice paddy – to get there. In Malagasy, the name of the mountain means “rising sound of moving water.” (Lots of names here are cool and literary). But no time to ponder that now, I’m worn our from following Séance all morning, and I think I’m going to take a nap. People here – just like in Oklahoma – are so proud and hard-working. Darting around the hills to pollinate flowers is just the first of Séance’s several jobs, and he lives in a bamboo hut that’s just barely bigger than a king-size mattress. I’m doing my best to learn from everyone here … Hope you’re doing well. Love, John]

Don't call me spelunker

2007-09-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

[9/15/07 Dear John, Thanks for all of the messages from Austin City Limits (ACL). I’ve been thinking about you guys and I’m sure you’re having a blast. Drink a Texas Martini for me (holy Jesus, that sounds so awesome right now). I’ve been out of cell phone range in Imorona. I stayed with Tom and Faith, a married couple in the Peace Corp, who lived in Austin before coming here. They’re totally interesting people. They met in a “caving” club. Just don’t call it “spelunking.” I made that mistake. Tom quipped: “Spelunkers are people who, like, walk around in caves with sandwiches and flashlights. We’re, like, serious. We have equipment.” OK sure. Tom and Faith got engaged on a Friday and married on the following Monday. They say Austin is a “cavers” heaven. As you know, it’s pretty good for food, too, and Tom and Faith fed me some amazing food during my stay. Everything is rice here, but you can do some cool stuff with it. I think when I get home, I might join some clubs and learn to cook. Their domestic settledness is appealing, because they keep the adventure alive too. Love, John]

Vanilla beans are just strung-out raisins

2007-09-07T14:31:00.000-04:00

[9/7/07 SAMBAVA, Madagascar. Dear Fam: I’m up in northeast Madagascar, the world’s best region for growing vanilla. When you walk down the streets of Sambava and Antalaha, the smell of vanilla drying in the tropical sun hits you with a force strong enough to stain your hair and clothes for the day. The smell isn’t everywhere, it just pops out of the windows of concrete bunkers where workers sort dried beans with the speed and precision of Vegas card dealers. They put beans in various tubs and piles that correspond to important categories for beans: length, color, moisture, weight, texture and – above all – smell. The smell was one of the things that surprised me most about vanilla production … because it’s gross. Opening a bottle of McCormick’s vanilla extract makes you think of cookies and ice cream and summers. Dried vanilla, to me, smells like raisins. Once the vanilla is properly dried and sorted (no easy feat, and one that takes nine months) then it is exported, mostly to the U.S. People don’t use the stuff here. … Wishing you love from a Chinese restaurant (where I’m writing this) that smells like raisins. –JOHN]

(image caption: negative image … beans are black and the tie is usually a palm frond)

Nude beach (but only if you're a zebu with a big horn)

2007-09-07T14:21:00.000-04:00

[9/7/07 SAMBAVA, Madagascar. Dear John, Went running today on the beach in Sambava, to clear my head. Scheduling woes are – you know me – not my cup of tea. I wanted to get out to this awesome national park because I’m stuck in this town until Sunday, but I don’t have time. On the run down the beach, I saw a man and pregnant woman herding cattle (zebu here). The hoof-prints in the sand made running interesting, and I was laughing out loud to myself about the whole scene – me on a de-stress run and encountering a herd of horned cattle blocking my path and coming right for me. I ran so much that I got blisters and cuts all over the bottoms of my feet – woops. The consistency of the beach is a little more like glass shards than powder. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot accomplished on this trip to the vanilla-growing region of Madagascar. I’m just frustrated I have to wait around for this one tour of one vanilla factory – and the down time is making me pretty lonely. Good thing the beautiful ocean and mountain views are here for that. Nature is about the only thing keeping me company (and sane) here at the moment. Love you, John]

The best thing you'll probably never eat...

2007-09-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

They come in a small plastic bag and for one quetzal (about 13 cents) you can get five. These two women make them every day out of a small store front. They laugh and talk in this really strange dialect (one of the 26 of the mayan variety i have yet to learn) and I can never tell if they're laughing at me or simply having a good time. But i will say, they make the best version of these you could possible shove your face with. They slap the dough together until it's round and flat and then they flip it over this burner until it starts to brown. Their regular customers could form a line that stretches all the way down seis avenida norte.

They call then "pupusas" in el salvador, but it pretty much translates throughout central america as "tortilla," a product that can only be purchased in a vacuum-sealed bag back home.

To understand, you'd have to know Rodolfo

2007-09-03T22:04:00.000-04:00

I watched him fumble through his wallet for a piece of identification, a photo, anything. He was proud of his education, that at one point he worked as a teacher, and he wanted to show me it was real. I couldn't help but think this man had spent a good chunk of his lifetime trying to prove himself. I couldn't stop thinking about that morning.

A Guatemalan photographer had documented the return of 21 coffins to the Guatemala City airport. The 21 young men were shot while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The photos were on display at a local center and I stared at the images of a crowd of people in the airport terminal clutching their mouths and looking on horrified as families stepped forward to claim the bodies. The story probably ran in the states as yet another successful catch by the U.S. Border patrol , how every American can sleep a little better knowing these men didn't make it into Texas. I stared at the photos that were hung in a narrow hallway and realized nobody else around me was talking. I couldn't help but think of the reactions this exhibit would receive back home.

The truth is, Americans most likely came across a small headline about how the border control is doing their job. What they won't see is these photos of the crying abuelitas back in Guatemala clutching their rosaries and tiptoing through the quiet rows of coffins to find their grandsons. They'll probably never see this incredible piece of humanity that silenced an entire hallway of people with its images, including me. Here, they weren't headlines, or statistics, or criminals.

They were people. Brothers. Fathers. Sons. People.

I'm not stupid enough to pretend i know the answers to the mess that is immigration between the United States and Latin America, I wouldn't even know where to begin, an estimated 3,000 people try to cross the border every day, about 300 actually make it, more than 1,000 undocumented immigrants who have left their homes in Central America are unaccounted for. Part of me has to wonder, when did this become okay? When did we start shooting people like animals and shipping them home in boxes?

Yes, there obviously needs to be some controls in place, but beneath all the politics, countless statistics, and crazy people patrolling the Arizona desert on their rifle-strapped-four-wheelers, it becomes pretty simple. immigration is the result of an economy that fails to support its people and we, as a nation, are telling them no, they can't cross our borders and work towards a better life, and if you want us to spell it out for you we will, in the form of 21 coffins.

Again, underneath all the politics, it becomes even more simple.

There's an old man living in Guatemala who hasn't seen his family in at least 20 years. His name is Rodolfo and he has a son in California and he would go live with him if he could, but he doesn't have enough time left on this earth to wait jump through all the hoops it would take to go through the U.S. legal system. So he comes to this cafe everyday and eats a danish and coffee and makes small talk with the women behind the counter. He used to be a teacher and in his younger years, he was actually pretty good looking. He has a great sense of humor because there's no use wasting time thinking about a family and grandkids.

They might as well not exist.

From the exhibit.

2007-09-03T21:52:00.000-04:00

Sundays are easily my favorite day of the week. It is a struggle to live here, every day I watch people struggle for food, water, respect, you name it and these people have to work for it. And while anyone could argue the whole I-love-Sundays is anything but a new revelation, I would just like to emphasis the phrase "taking a load off" takes on an entirely new meaning when you're job is schlepping back an forth from a pueblo in the mountains to a tiny city at the foothill to sell people avocados. The rest that comes on Sunday means so much more to me now. The parks are literally filled with people and talking and laughing.

Somehow it makes the rest of the days of the week seem a little bit easier.

2007-09-03T21:49:00.000-04:00

you try keeping it together on cobblestone streets. - Jessie

2007-08-25T11:51:00.000-04:00

Julio-So, I didn't cop out. I tried to learn the salsa in a local club called Riki's, where one of the surviving members of the disbanded Buena Vista Social Club, Ignacio "Nachito" Herrera, plays a quick set every Wednesday night. Usually late, always unexected, he might show up, he might not. I've caught him a couple of times (me and my friend Amy have become his official "groupies") but last night he jammed for three hours and I totally forgot about learning salsa, grabbed my camera, and just tried to capture the energy in the room. At some point, everyone forgot they were in a restaurant, put the chairs aside, and just danced. I didn't want to use my flash, I felt it would somehow alter the mood, but now I'm really glad I didn't. These abstractions capture it completely and I'm blown away to realize that if someone asked me to describe the salsa for them, i probably couldn't. but i would show them these. su amiga gringa, Jessie

Ignacio "Nachito" Herrera jams and yes, he's just as cool in person...

Just when you think you've heard it all...

2007-08-25T11:33:00.000-04:00

Money does strange things to people, something that was nailed home today in the form of a 200-pound woman named Maria. I was reading on the sidewalk, waiting for a friend, when she lumbered toward me in her wheelchair and showed me a prescription for medicine she needed but couldn't afford to fill. I'm used to the beggars making up stories to get sympathy, someone's brother is dying, another needs milk for her baby. But Maria had a wild card.

She lifted up her skirt and pointed to her legs and I felt my stomach turn.

She has six months, the masses on her legs nothing compared to the tumor growing inside her. Pieces of her black skin color had already been eaten away. We talked for a while, I told her she shared the same name with my mother. I was kneeling down beside her so we could talk at eye level and before she wheeled away she kissed the top of my head and told me not to forget her. I told her I wouldn't, pretty sure the exchange would stay with me for a while. Then she wheeled off and I watched her plead for food from a nearby cafe.They gave her coffee and a few muffins and just as i thought i was taking in this serene moment of humanity, a few seconds later I heard cardboard hit the cement. I looked up as Maria had finished her drink and threw the cup to the sidewalk, lumbering onto her next stop, and I saw the looks on the faces of people who walked by and saw her.

I laughed out loud.

Money does strange things to people, which is probably why my parents made sure I never put much faith into it. Pieces of paper that grant luxuries to some, even if they don't deserve or want them, it also how we face the cards we're dealt, the very state of health we are allowed and in most cases, where we sit in society ... literally ... and sometimes that seat has two wheels. Some of the the people who stopped to throw a few pieces of change at her couldn't even look Maria in the face and I could tell she gave up caring a long time ago. She threw the cup, and to some people on the street that day she probably came off as a thankless begger, but that's not what I saw.

To me, it was Maria telling society to take its system and go to hell.

How many quetzals can you put on a human head ??

2007-08-25T11:29:00.000-04:00

Talia, Yet another surreal moment. So, we were going over the verb "costar" today and it means "to cost." Alenka was explaining to me how the word is impersonal, that something can cost something, but that an actual person cannot cost something (a lesson i found pretty ironic coming from a country with one of the highest human traffiking rates in the world) so I teased Alenka and pointed out that according to all the gringos walking through the streets of Antigua with their adopted brown babies, a price can be put on a human head. I was totally joking and then Alenka casually said:

"Well, when my son Christian was a baby..."

Yeah, turns out someone actually tried to by her son, Christian, from her when he was a baby and she was walking through some city just south of here in Chiapas, Mexico. Her husband was a fair-skinned German and Christian came out blond and blue-eyed, which down here is kind of rare. She said turned down the offer, as if someone had tried to sell her a purse or a piece of jewelry that wasn't really her taste.I was laughing so hard at how nonchanlantly she brought it up that I asked if she might reconsider the offer now that Christian is 24 and kind of a punk. She just kind of looked at me, smiled and nodded. I couldn't help laughing out loud. here we were, in a cafe, drinking tea,and calmly discussing the actually buying and selling of a human being.

thinking of you chica, Jessie

M'Boutha Muppets in Madagascar

2007-08-25T06:27:00.001-04:00

[8/19/07 Dear Joe, I went up to Tana’s (relatively) ritzy northern suburbs last night to see a percussion and reggae band called M’Boutha. The music was pretty good, and it is nice to realize that people here like something besides Shania Twain and Kelly Clarkson, but my favorite part was watching the main drummer, whose shaggy hair and tripped-out swaying reminded me of a cross between Janice and the French Chef from the Muppets. And, in the face, he looked like Jimmy Hendrix … and, in a very understated way, he was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt. I love a good character. Sometimes, to cope with people I find annoying or don’t understand, I turn them into cartoons in my head. That way, they are entertaining – fun, original pieces of life – not irritating. But there was no need to caricature this drummer. Hair flopping in his face, cigarette dangling from his lower lip, eyes wandering aimlessly. He should really go solo. –John]

Malagasy Discotheque

2007-08-25T06:20:00.000-04:00

[8/18/07 LE BUS, TANA – Dear Molly, Africa is a place of contrasts – of high highs and crushing lows. For Tana’s wealthy class (read: ex-pats), you find highs at Le Bus, an all-night discotheque. You can be openly gay there, and no one blinks. That totally amazes me, since elsewhere, homosexuality is completely taboo. But it still makes me uncomfortable to think that this life of excess can exist so close beside dire poverty. But then again, what difference does that juxtaposition make really? In the West, we live to excess all the time. It’s just easier for many people, because they never have to, or don’t want to, see how the other side lives. Here, unless you want to sit inside your razor-wire compound all day and all night, no one has that luxury. – John]

History under cardboard boxes

2007-08-24T01:59:00.000-04:00

[8/18/07 Dear Mom, Dad and Ben, There is not a lot of emphasis placed on cultural history here. So I was pleased to find a temporary one-room museum – pitched like a tent on the sidewalk -- that told the story of Madagascar’s kings and queens, before the French occupation.

The square building was painted to look like a castle, but its pitched roof was made of flattened cardboard boxes and the walls were planks of wood, painted on the outside to look like stone. Inside were pictures of royalty, dressed to look rather European, and with the lighting in their portraits displayed as such that they almost looked Caucasian. I wonder if that was intentional – if they lighter skin color has always been favorable, or a symbol of power here.

My favorite royal Malagasy is the one with the longest name (54 letters … no suggestions from spellcheck): Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka. My least favorite is Queen Ranavalona I, who made her subjects, accused of wrongdoing, eat a poisonous shrub to determine their guilt or innocence. She also flung people off a cliff behind her palace. Really nice lady. Her palace burned down in 1995 and they are rebuilding it now. Hopefully you won’t see supposed witches flying off the cliffs once the scaffolding is peeled away and the building is fully functional again. Love, John]

Sweetest snarl of the week goes to ...

2007-08-22T07:27:00.000-04:00

[8/18/07 Dear Clanton, Man, I don’t know how you photographers do it … shoving foot-long lenses in peoples’ faces all the time. I’m envious of the self-assuredness it takes. I’m a wimp. Today, I was walking back from the post office when I saw a little girl teetering along a ledge beside the road, holding her sister’s hand for support. I wanted to take a picture, so I ran up from behind them and asked if that would be OK. They said sure, thankfully (many people here don’t, or ask for money). But it was too late. I had wrecked their moment. The little girl snarled at me inquisitively, hands on hips. Her sister flashed a perfect Crest Kids smile. I said, It’s OK, it’s OK, just keep walking like you were -- but that was asking too much, I guess. “Ignore the crazy white oppressor with a camera pointed in my face? Man, I’m only 3!”

I remember, on our trips to Tar Creek, you told me I should to worry less about intruding on people. You’re right. I’m trying. Because, within an ethical framework, the results are usually worth it. Tracy’s parents loved our story about her. – John]

Ah, the sweet smell of diesel in the morning

2007-08-22T07:18:00.001-04:00

[8/17/07 Dear Jesse, After walking around Antananarivo the other day, I came home and wiped my nose on a tissue. The white paper turned charcoal gray, stained by the soot that floats around the air here and cakes the nostrils of the city’s 2 million inhabitants.

I met today with the spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Madagascar, Sylvain Rafiadana-Ntsoa, and he told me that air pollution is a low priority here. Other health issues, like malaria and dihedral diseases, kill far more people. There isn’t enough money to do it all, he said.

Still, Africa is the urbanizing more quickly than any other continent. And the World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills 800,000 people every year. Developing countries bear a bigger proportion of the pollution than their richer counterparts.

In Madagascar’s capital, it is difficult to breathe walking down the street, and exercising in such conditions is next to impossible. The bikers and runners hit the streets at about 5 a.m., to avoid the smog that hits at the 6 o’clock rush hour. Guidebooks warn tourists they will have a headache for the first two weeks they are in Tana. I can attest to that so far. It feels like you’re standing near a gas pump almost all the time. And this isn’t close to one of Africa’s most-polluted cities – much less China’s.

Automobiles create much of the pollution. Trucks and buses leave furry black tails behind on the road – thick, wet and sticky, like cancerous cotton candy. The streets are narrow, winding and crowded, and the cars are mostly from the 1960s and 70s, without emissions regulators or clean-burning fuel.

Before I left The Oklahoman, I did a project on Oklahoma City’s air quality woes. Those issues, while still important, seem minor in compared to the pollution here. And for the Malagasy, it’s not an issue at all. There's not enough money to make it one. -- John]

That's me, the national dancing tree

2007-08-22T07:09:00.000-04:00

[8/17/07 UNIV. OF ANTANANARIVO -- Dear John, At the petanque match, I sat on the concrete stadium stairs next to the mascot for the Island Games, Ravi. That’s short for Ravenala, the name of a famous Malagasy palm with leaves that fan out on a single plane.

This mascot’s real name is Manitra. (He is one of 10). He’s 23 year old, and he says being the mascot is a good job. He dances for crowds and takes photos with tourists, mostly. He likes dancing, but the costume is restrictive, he said. You can see scratch marks on the shoulders of his red vest from the head bouncing back and forth while he dances. And the suit is hot. But whatever, he said, he gets to be on TV (although his friends make fun of him and you can’t really tell who he is). So here’s to dancing that’s uninhibited by television cameras or restrictive tree-character costumes. Love, John]

Plinko + Kerplunk = Petanque

2007-08-21T02:02:00.000-04:00

[8/17/07 UNIV. OF ANTANANARIVO Dear John, Eyes gazing intensely over a rectangular gravel court, the petanque player crouches in the center of red mini-hula-hoop – sized for someone like Cindy Loo Hoo or Nicole Ritchie. Metal ball in hand, palm facing down, she swings her arm back and then steadily forward. Release. The ball sails through the air – sometimes flying as high as the tops of nearby flag poles – and lands near a back of others with a “petanque.” Television cameras follow the ball through the sky. When it lands, a patter of clapping comes from the stadium seating.

Welcome to the bizarre and obsessive world of petanque (pronounced pay-tunk) at the Island Games in Madagascar. This country is full of petanque-heads, and, after watching the game for a few hours, I still have no idea why. It’s bocci ball, dude, except the balls are two shades of metal – shiny and not-so-shiny – instead of different colors. This belongs at a BBQ, not the regional Olympics.

The point of the game is simple: is to toss your teams balls close to a small green ball, which is the target, or the “jack.” But these people, and their backers on petanque.org, take that task to uber-serious degrees. Here is a suggested warm-up exercise from petanque.org (they're way to professional for .com):

“Warm Up. Roll 2 boules (that’s “balls” in French) around the palm of your hand. Rotate shoulders, throw a few gentle shots. Don’t start cold and a 10m shot!”

10 meter shots. Phew.

I made a few friends at the petanque tournament. The first was a young woman (don’t know her name) who plays petanque for the University of Antananarivo’s team. Yes, really, they have a team. I met her a her boyfriend while I was wandering around the university, looking for the petanque match. The problem with my approach: I had forgotten the name of the game. The night before, I had taken to jokingly calling it Plinko (from The Price is Right ... who is the new host, by the way?) and Kerplunk (from 1980s living coffee tables).

Our conversation, in French mind you:

“Do you know where the Island Games are?” I asked.
“Oh, of course. Which game?” she said.
“Ummm, I don’t know the name exactly … there are tiny balls… I think it’s called tuk-tuk?”

She died laughing.

“OK, we’re going there,” she said.
Apparently tuk-tuk is the word for cracker here. All the way to the courts they were speaking in Malagasy and laughing. “Jibba jabba jibba jabba… tuk tuk … HAHAHAHA!” I’m always here to entertain …

Love, John
PS: petanque.com also has postcards. Some a really hilarious.]

Volcan de Fuego: Part Deux

2007-08-20T21:27:00.000-04:00

[8-20-07] Mom - Volcan de Fuego erupted again today and it was amazing. I was out on my deck studying and my tutor, Alenka, just sort of gasped and stared. She yelled for Thelma, the maid who has worked for this family for four years. I watched the young girl's face and realized that Thelma lives in a pueblo on the other side of the volcan. Most of the native Maya who work in Antigua walk into the city every day from villages built in the mountains and near the volcanoes because they can't afford to live here. Nobody said anything for a while, we just sat back and watched Mother Nature rip. Love, Jessie

2007-08-18T22:42:00.000-04:00

A shout out from Vegas ...

2007-08-18T22:09:00.000-04:00

[8-17-07] Dear Jarrod,

It's amazing what you can find in the middle of a desert. I was in Las Vegas at a professional convention and some friends and I ventured to the exhibit in some of our downtime. The only "predator-based aquarium" on the continent, includes more than 2,000 animals - including sea turtles, piranha, moon jellyfish and, of course, sharks - in 1.6 million gallons of seawater. I'm not a huge fan of animals. I like giraffe, and that's pretty much it. But being in the exhibit, you can't help but appreciate the beauty of these animals and marvel at Mother Nature. It's a wonder something so beautiful can hurt so badly. I just couldn't take my eyes off of these moon jellyfish. A sting from these will likely only irritate you, but stings from other jellyfish can prove fatal to humans and other animals. I knew all of this, but as I sat watching them pulse through the tank, all I wanted to do was touch one.

---Love, Talia

I fit in for about a second...

2007-08-18T21:59:00.000-04:00

[8-17-07] Daudi- I've never felt more white in my entire life (except for that one time I found myself in a ghetto portion of D.C. covering an Al Sharpton speech, but that's another story for another time) I've been in Guatemala for almost a month now and I've developed a comfortable groove. I get up, I walk around with my tutor, I go to the park, I go to the gym, I have a couple friends to hang out with and stumble home with, but just when I think I'm starting to blend in, something like this happens. I was walking with a group of people and one moment I was a Guatemalan crossing the street and the next second I was a gringa taking pictures.

These women were so visually interesting I couldn't help it, but I almost wished they hadn't turned around. They didn't speak spanish, only a mayan dialect, so i might as well been talking to my toothbrush when I tried to explain I was journalist from the states. they knew the only english words they needed.

"Piso, give us a dollar...an american dollar...GIVE US A DOLLAR!!!!!!!"

In the villages surrounding Guatemala City, the kids and women have been trained to ask for money when a white person wants to take their picture. It's much easier taking photos in Antigua, which has been largely westernized and considers itself "modern" and people understand "soy periodista" and don't try to bribe you everytime you're interested in taking a photograph of them. It kind of threw me to see this sweet looking woman with her baby demand money the second my camera came out. I just walked off as they screamed after me. I felt kind of sick, like yesterday when that guy hissed in my ear (one of those things in Latin America that's actually worse if you know what it means).

I don't really like to look at this picture now.

It's been extremely cool and real crossing the cultural divide, but there's moments I would give anything just to be back in the states kickin' with my friends and not dealing with a place where I don't look or sound like anybody else.Forget telling them you're from "Idaho," they barely know "Florida" and it's a two hour flight from here. I end up having to say "Miami" because it's the only reference point they know.

i'll be with the monks this weekend...

2007-08-18T21:55:00.000-04:00

[8-17-07] A blind girl told me a story a long time ago that I didn’t even get until now. When she was a teenager her parents sent her to a special camp to teach kids like her how to navigate the world. No instructions, no help, she was plopped in a small apartment with food, clothing, and a bed. She said she walked streets alone, with a cane, and had to learn what the sound of a car coming close was, or how it felt to hit the edge of a curb. When the camp ended she was covered in bruises, she showed me a scar on her left knee.

I called it child abuse. She called it "baptism by fire."

What I didn’t understand about her story, is that every bruise, every cut had taught her something she couldn’t have learned any other way and given the choice of doing it again, Francesca said there was no choice. It was something she had to do.I’ve been thinking about Francesca a lot lately. Probably, because I live in Central America in a home with people who do not speak a word of English. Every day I wake up and spend four hours with an instructor who leads me through the streets of Guatemala conversing only in a language I’m just beginning to grasp. Everyday we sit in a small café that feels like a prison sometimes (probably something to do with the bars on the windows) and every day Alenka prods me on as I write sentences an American fifth grader would be called "special" for writing.

Every day, I feel like an idiot.

I remember telling someone once that if you’re not doing at least one thing that scares the crap out of you every day, you’re wasting your time. It sounded prophetic at the time. I was pretty proud of myself. I now realize that if I could go back in time and face myself in the past, I’d probably slap myself for being so oblivious to what my words actually meant. For the past two years writing for a living, people actually gave me money for putting words down on paper. I was obsessed with communicating with others, understanding them and where they were coming from.

And now, everyday, I feel like an idiot.

I wade through my "baptism by fire" feeling, for the most part, like a bumbling moron. Every once in a while, I think of Francesca and I wonder who I’ll be at the end of all this. I think of the person I was before and the life and the family and the friends I left behind to come do this.

And I find myself scared to death.

But then I take a walk, or take a picture that makes me realize I love this place and all of its simplicities, or I’ll stop and notice that Alenka only speaks Spanish to me now because I understand pretty much everything she’s saying, or I’ll run into a friend and realize that in the short time I’ve been here, I’ve somehow already made a life for myself.

It’s a small, quiet life, filled with nothing but time to sit around and figure things out.

2007-08-15T15:54:00.000-04:00

Thelma, the 17-year-old maid who works in the house I'm living in stopped me the other day in the kitchen to tell me she loved the color of my eyes. I came back to the house today and told Thelma I met someone that put my eyes to shame. This woman was on the edge of central park, which is the center of Antigua, begging for change. I was rushing to meet someone when my eyes met hers and i was floored. They were this haunting blue. They struck me after being lost in a sea of brown every day. I walked around the block just to get enough courage to ask her if I could take her photograph. She was so small and delicate i was afraid her hands would break when I took them in mine.

She had this light inside her, like she knew a secret the rest of us didn't. I looked at her and wondered how hundreds of people could pass by her every day and not want to know her story.

She let me sit with her and I couldn't help but feel honored. - Jessie

Open if you dare...

2007-08-15T15:23:00.000-04:00

[8-14-07] Marty- Yeah, i feel you on the whole "writing in espanol is ridiculously hard." good luck finding the the upside down question mark on your keyboard or searching on "Google en Espanol." i'm trying to do what you said and enjoy everything, but i find myself just trying to hold on.between the language barrier and the logistics of living in a third world country. there's a whole lot that i didn't even consider, such as:

A) water must never be consumed under any circumstances unless it is purchased in bottle form, which explains why everybody is walking around with cans of Fanta, a soda that looks so toxic i'm surprised the people drinking it do not spontaneously combust once it hits their intestinal tract.

B) everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, comes in baggie form. ketchup, mayonnaise, juice, you go to the grocery store and you're literally in an aisle staring at a bag o' mustard.

C) toilet paper, a product i had previously thought should be used and then flushed down the actual toilet, is to be discarded next to the toilet. i swear, i'm going to get back to the states and i'm going to go to the bathroom and be looking around for the wastebin. "Flush it? Why on EARTH would you flush it " i'll ask with this wide-eyed look in my eyes.

okay, and now for everything that goes without saying. i love you guys, i think of you often, and yes, i'm negotiating with a small guatemalan man named "Juan" for a burro i shall name "Sanchez" ... he wants 20 quetzales, but i've bargained him down to three watermelons and usage of mi bicicleta on wednesdays.

i'll let you guys know how it goes. - Jessie

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get kicked out of the house...

2007-08-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

[8-14-07] John - I'm pretty sure I'm going to get kicked out of the house ... and not in a cool "Real World: The San Franscisco edition" type of way, but in a more dramatic, my Guatemalan family standing on the front porch and waving as I walk away type of way ... okay, i have to type extra fast. i have class in 10 minutes and there's a lot to get down.

and the saga continues, day three with me living with the other students.

first we have Keith, the old guy i have described extensively in the Post-a-Card below this one, and today we have a new character, a middle-aged swiss woman named "Theresa" or "Tessa" depending on who you ask and whether or not she's speaking swiss deutch at the time. she has this really short cropped pixie cut and she nods her head so vigorously it appears she know what's going on, but then you ask her something in espanol and she has absolutely no clue.last night, i looked around the table and just completely cracked up.

Deli, the mom of the house, just looked at me. her son, Christian, said "ella es luna" which, and i'm not sure about this one, may literally translate to "she is crazy." but seriously John, you have to understand that I was looking around the table trying to grasp for the words to describe the following scenerio. seated at the table were the following characters:

A) Keith, aka "Old Man River," coughing into a hanky he has pulled from his Member's Only jacket and still trying to speak even as bits of food FLY out of his mouth.

B) Theresa, aka, "the head-bobbin Swede," who looks like she's either picking up on the spanish or having a serious seizure ... i'm still not sure which.

i'm watching the conversation unfold, kieth plowing through spanish, talking really fast so no one notices his mistakes, interrupting anyone else who tries to speak, and then there's tessa just nodding her head. the thought of a romance blossoming between the two popped into my head and i swear, i tried to hold it in, but failed. i just cracked up, laughed out loud even though the entire conversation stopped and every one at the table just stared at me. keith, bits of food still hanging. teresa, head bobbin stopped, looked pretty damn scared. and the mom just kind of staring at me like i was "luna."

i said i needed to study and left.

To take a photo would have been impolite...

2007-08-15T15:09:00.000-04:00

Day Two con mi familia...

[8-12-07] John - this morning at breakfast was a little better. i met the dad of the household and i think i may have an ally. he's this kind old man who was so sweet to me just because i tried this weird picante sauce he makes and carries around in a clear glass jar with him ... yeah, totally not creepy AT ALL. anyways, we shared this moment where we both looked over at keith, the 80-year-old who is the other student living en mi casa, and the room was silent. all you could hear was keith smacking away (read previous Post-a-Cards for futher detail on the introduction of "Keith" in my travels) ....

i swear, the noises that his bodily functions make are so loud, it's enough to make you wonder if there's a bunch of mice inside of him running on those little wheels making sure everything is still working after all these years. it's at that exact moment me and the dad just shared this look and there was a silent agreement.

if the smacking got any more louder, we were going to take keith out and shoot him.

so later on, over eggs and tortillas, the dad is describing how this weekend at a wedding they literally chased these chickens down and ripped off their heads before eating them and i look over at "Tessa" (the swiss chick who came to live in the house this week to study espanol) and she is completely white. i fumble through spanish and tell the father quickly that "Tessa" is a vegetarian and he has just described the massive slaughter of a bunch of live animals. he laughs and assures "Tessa" that they ate the animals live after they captured them ... it's then i realized that i may have met the love of my life.

he just happens to be a balding retiree kickin' it in central america.

more to come i'm sure. take care. jessie

Not even going to try to fit this on an actual postcard...

2007-08-15T15:03:00.000-04:00

Day one a mi casa...

[8-11-07] John- you're truly the only person who will understand just how ridiculously funny this is. so, i moved in with my family tonight and they tell me dinner is ready and that "the other student will be down shortly." so i'm in this dining room looking at a bowl of what appears to be ramen noodles, bits of tomato, and seasoning.

in walks in the other student.

keith looks about 80 years old, with bright white hair, and i swear to god, wearing a member's only jacket. the guy sits down and starts eating, shoveling the food in his mouth, only to pause so he can cough into what appears to be a hanky he has pulled from the pocket of his jacket. he's from germany, works for a non profit, wants to bone up on his spanish. he's been in classes for three weeks. when i ask him where's he from and what he does for a living in espanol, he looks at me like i'm speaking dutch and says "what?"

i think of telling keith to just give it up, that if he doesn't know spanish by now he's pretty much never gonna get it. but i just looked at him and started convulsing in laughter at how funny the situation was. i almost started crying, after everything that's happened so far, but i decided it was more funny than anything else. i mean, i quit my job to come to central america, where i spend four hours a day wandering the city with a woman in her late 40s who really likes to take me shopping and call it "school" just because she points out the pretty shirts in espanol "ahhhh, mira. esta camisa bonita ..."

but wait, there's more.

i will now dine on a regular basis with an 80 year old who appears to have a serious case of whooping cough. he started laughing too, by the way. i think we've both lost it. so, i miss you, i'm thinking of you too, and i love the stories you're doing. peace. Jessie

Homes razed to "make Antananarivo more attractive"

2007-08-14T13:53:00.000-04:00

[8/13/07 TANA Dear Estus, I went to the Alliance Francaise today to find a French tutor. What I found outside was more interesting. There is a little wood-plank neighborhood just in their front lawn. Some kids saw me walking by and I asked them if they wanted me to take their picture. Much to my surprise, they did, and so did everyone else at the place. I showed them the photos, on the back of my camera, and the jumped up and down, loving it. They are living in about the poorest situation I can think of – this river of sewage flows between them and the street. But they seemed totally cool with everything. I’m sure that’s a naïve, sunny-side perspective, but maybe I need to stop feeling so guilty about having money, and just try to have a good time with people, and help out where I can. Did read something when I got home that kind of burst my bubble: Reuters reports that 137 illegal (they don’t own the land) homes like these, just across the street actually, were bulldozed by the government to “make Antananarivo more attractive for the Indian Ocean games,” which are going on this week. Elyse Razafimahefa was the city council member quoted in the article. If people are still outside tomorrow, I will ask them about it and report back. Good luck with the Spanish at OCCC. --- John]

No. 119 bus and Darwin

2007-08-14T13:43:00.000-04:00

[8/13/07 TANA Dear John, Elana walked me to the bus stop this morning and told me to get on the No. 119, which drives through the center of town and then out to Ho Chi Mihn Circle (gotta love the communist history here). “You seriously have to throw elbows to make it onto the bus,” she said. I didn’t believe her then, but I do now. It wasn’t until my ninth try that I made it onto one of the buses (which are really old Mazda vans, kind of the shape of the 60s VW Bus). When the vans pull in, you have to start running with them, because a crowd of people funnels straight for the sliding side door. The buses only stop for a matter of seconds. If you’re not one of the first three people in the chute, you have no chance. Even if you have one shoulder in the door, you still have to force your way past the people next to you, because they’re all gunning of the open seat. I’m usually not one for physical confrontation – especially when other passengers have babies tied to their backs – so I don’t know exactly how I’m going to get around this city. I guess I will just have to leave a big time window for a trip across town, assuming it will take me an hour to get up the nerve to slug my way onto a ride. Or I could give in and take a taxi. But that’s not the same adventure. Love you, John PS: how’s my car?]

420 stairs to the Indian Ocean Games

2007-08-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

[8/12/07 TANA Dear Jim and Pat, At the top of a 420-step staircase, Richard leaned on a rock rail, watching ant-sized men play rugby in a stadium below. Today is the first day of the “Jeux des Isles,” or Island Games, which is sort of a mini-Olympics for the countries in this region. The games last all week, and the city is all spiffed-up for the arrival of outsiders: colorful banners on all of the roads, homeless people conspicuously missing from the tunnels that go through the mountains around the city. On top of one mountain, I asked Richard, who is an IT guy at the local hospital, why he didn’t watch the match from inside the stadium. He said the tickets were far too expensive for him. We talked for a while: I learned that his favorite sport is basketball and he learned that I would be way too short to play basketball in the United States, and then I left him there. I went down all 420 stairs, watching people on their way up huff and puff and stop for breaks. When I got to the bottom, I found out that tickets to the event were only 1,000 Ariary, or 50-cents US. The idealistic part of me wanted to trudge back up the mountain to offer to buy Richard a seat. It probably would have made his day. But I didn’t. And now I’m back to that emotion that is all-too-familiar here: guilt. Next time I meet a Richard, I will offer to help out -- even if there are 420 stairs to climb. Good thing there are one MILLION staircases in the city. Love, John]

The beat goes on, lex, just to the tune of a different drum ...

2007-08-12T12:47:00.000-04:00

Lexey -

This son and father play in this same spot every single saturday afternoon. the music is intense, like nothing you've ever heard. the dad is on flute and the son is on drums, just sitting there waiting for his cue. the timing is perfection. you should have been here, we could have totally jammed with them. - Jessie

I'm ready to admit the thing that struck me most about the people of Guatemala was the poverty, the empty way some people look at you in the street, how their stores are filled with goods most americans wouldn't even consider, let alone put down good money for. but the more i am here, the more i realize they have fuller lives than most wealthy people you would come across in the states.

i'm not saying i've been here long enough to become numb to it, and i still feel a gnawing in my stomach everytime i run into the guy on 6th avenue north who plays the mandolin and has no legs and spends the entire day begging for change, but the thing is that now, i focus on the laughter, on the happiness i see on these very same streets.

there's this one family who runs a vending cart and the kids are never wearing shoes and they sit in the hot sun all day selling plantains and bags of juice (yes, "bags" of juice, but more on that later) but my point is, if i were to tell you about them, i would show you how they eat every meal together, always, how they pat each other's backs and display acts of love in almost everything that they do.

the drummer and his father have to play in the streets for money, for survival, so the white tourists can stop by and contemplate how much money to throw in front of them, but the bond between the two was striking, one no amount of money can buy.

watching them, i seriously felt like dancing. you would have too.

note to self: exchange currency on a weekly basis

2007-08-12T12:40:00.000-04:00

Mom -

I'm sorry, i forgot to go to the bank on friday and all i have is 15 Q's (about $2) in my pocket. it's saturday, which means i have to make it stretch for two days. i'm sorry i haven't been in touch more, and i know your probably freaking out, but just know that i moved out of the hostel this weekend and i'm finally in a house. i should be okay ... i think. regards, pequina.

i've basically been in survival mode for the past three weeks, finding out where i can eat, where i can sleep, and when i got really sick, where the closest bathroom was. i'm 24 years old and i have no problem crying to my mom about it.

but the problem is, she's not really up for it. she's sick and nobody's really sure what's wrong with her. i'm trying not to think about it, but it's difficult when someone is so much a part of me.

i just try to focus on the fact that when i told her i was going to quit my job and live in central america for a while, she was the first person who understood my reasoning and told me to go for it and not look back. in the six months it took me to save up for this trip, every month, a check arrived in the mail. it was $30 from a 70-year-old woman who lives in north Idaho on social security, someone who brought 15 kids into this world and made each of them feel special through nicknames like "pequina."

i've decided to vote for the candidate who doesn't get shot...

2007-08-12T12:31:00.000-04:00

Joe -

Remember two years ago when we were in washington covering the state of the union and finding ourselves blown away by the chaos? well, think that, times 100, in a tiny city in central america that just happens to be the former capital of guatemala.

viva la revolucion!

- Jessie

Guatemala is going to elect a new president in September, which means things are really crazy right now. i know i joke a lot about almost everything, but over dinner tonight another student told me 40 people have died so far in this election and this is one of those rare situations where humor eludes me. my tutor, Alenka, does real estate as a second job and said that tourism is really low this year because of the elections, which have led to execution-style killings. it's just a small reminder that i'm, in fact, living in a third world country ... in case i could forget.

there's other reminders, such as, the fact that you cannot put toilet paper in the toilet under ANY circumstances. they leave a waste basket beside the can ... enough said.

If you ask, they'll slaughter the chicken right in front of you ...

2007-08-12T12:16:00.000-04:00

Talia -
Market days are Jueves (thursdsay) Martes (Tuesday) y Sabado (Saturday), which have become my favorite days of the week. food, clothing, entertainment, you name it and it's here. need a chicken? dead or alive. low on fruits and vegetables? you've come to the right place. Clothing from the 1980s? we've got you covered ... literally. - Jessie

ps. i was going to stick to our postcard "rule" and just post one pic per posting, but the market is one of the most interesting places i've ever been and i'm going to post a few more.

i'm pretty sure i could benchpress a guatemalan

2007-08-12T12:09:00.000-04:00

Shawn -

Okay, i'm pretty sure we would have laughed about this for about an hour. me, sweatin' to the oldies at Gym de Antigua. the equipment here is actually pretty nice, but the music was ripped from some 1980s MTV music video (back when MTV actually played music videos) i have no idea what i'm doing here, but let's just say you can only climb so many volcanoes and walk through so many villages before it gets old. so yes, i am an actual card carrying member of Gym de Antigua. - Jessie

What's next, a Burger King in Darfur?

2007-08-12T12:01:00.000-04:00

John - I don't know which is more depressing, the fact that there's a McDonald's here, or that i was so desperate for food when i saw it that i would have sold my firstborn for a bBig Mac. i wanted to save money this week so i've been living on tortillas y aguacates (avacados) that only cost me about 20 Q's at the market (about 2 dollars and 50 cents) it was roughly four days worth of food, but i'm kind of hungry now. - Jessie

smaller people = smaller meals

i'm not sure if it's just the economies or the fact that americans are the kings of consumption, but the meals here are tiny compared to anything you'd buy back in the states. it's actually really refreshing, and funny, when i see guys have to order twice just to get enough to fill them up.

Really should have paid more attention in Geology 101

2007-08-12T11:48:00.000-04:00

Dear Mickey,
I know i wasn't listening to any of your lectures back at U of I, but Volcan de Fuego erupted a few days ago and it was literally the coolest thing i have ever seen. period.

signed, Jessie (aka "girl who always turned in her papers to late and asked for extra credit two days before the end of the semester when she realized she had a D in your class)

Radio disco !!! (when appropriate)

2007-08-11T04:14:00.000-04:00

[8/10/07 TANA Dear John, My new radio, purchased at the grocery store, features indiscriminate flashing disco lights. The lights don’t care if you’re playing Justin Timberlake (it would have to be a cassette) or BBC Radio Afrique (as pictured above), they’re always up for a party. It’s great most of the time, but when things get too terribly ironic, like when the BBC is talking about kidnappings in Nigeria, you can respectfully turn the lights off … and then flip them back on for sports.
I expect it to be a great help for learning French. Now I just need a tutor or something. That will be my project for Monday. Love, John]

Traveler's D, brought to you by personification

2007-08-11T04:07:00.000-04:00

[8/9/07 TANA Dear John, There are tenacious little elves in my gut, pinching at my intestines with pliers. They work on semi-regular intervals. For a while, they had me running upstairs to the toilet every 30 minutes. Now it’s more like every hour or so. Such a predicament is unavoidable, I suppose, when you’re traveling in a place where you must boil the water to drink it. If that is the case, then I am truly lucky, since the twisting and pinching of my stomach started just when I got off the plane here in Tana this morning. Detail that makes me slightly unlucky: no TP in the restroom at the airport. But it was a quick taxi ride, thank the Lord (and the elves).]

Haiku 2 (Jack Kerouac is so ashamed)

2007-08-11T03:48:00.000-04:00

[8/7/07 → A day in haiku … well, close.

Toyota tires slip through muddy turns;
dusty tape deck
never skips a beat.

$300 million from the World Bank
to grow wretched troll trees
-- in symmetrical villages.

Boat full of hangovers
putts across a turquoise paradise.

(OK, so maybe I’m not much of a poet … sorry the phone call got cut short this morning … I’ll call soon … and I’m sure that call will happen way b4 you get this.) Love, John]

Biodiversity scares me sometimes ...

2007-08-11T03:30:00.000-04:00

No sleep

2007-08-11T03:27:00.000-04:00

[8/7/07 NOSY KOMBA --- Dear Monies/Mock, I tried everything – falling asleep with my index fingers in my ears, smashing pillows on both sides of my face, breathing exercises to distract my mind – but when there is a bombastic Malagasy “sallegy” concert going on 100 feet from your thatched bungalow, there is really nothing you can do to sleep. I joined the party until about 1 a.m., but since my boat left early in the morning, I thought I would try to sleep at least a little. But Fandrana, the band, and its constant banging bass drum and asinine accordion riffs definitely won the slumber standoff, rattling my chest and making my ears scream high pitches until 6:23 a.m. (yes, I wrote it down). I think the band is kind of like the American or Euro version of techno, or it fills the same role. The chords and patterns repeat over and over. They pick up and drop off, but never go away, so you can dance until dawn. The dance that goes with sallegy appears to be inspired by the America’s own ass-shaking wonder, Beyonce. Endless booty shaking. Can’t get enough. For much of the night, the part where I wasn’t on the verge of lunacy, I wondered what the finale would be. Fade out? Big bang? Screams? What time? (not dawn, please God, not dawn). I never would have guessed a rapid-fire accordion solo of “Frere Jacques,” but that is what is so great about Madagascar. You never know what to expect. Hope you guys are doing well. Tell Hunter hello. – SUTTER]

No lemurs

2007-08-11T03:20:00.000-04:00

[8/6/07 NOSY KOMBA (LEMUR flipping ISLAND) --- Dear Molly, I am the only person in the world who can go to a place called “lemur island,” hike around for 6 hours, spend the night, and not see one damn endangered primate. Apparently the lemurs know that all the banana-toting tourists show up between 9 a.m. and noon. At noon, they vanish into an underground lemur lair, not to emerge until the next morning, unless bananas are spotted. And while they’re hiding out, I’m traipsing all around the island with my eyes pointed up to the trees, hoping to see one, and tripping because I’m not looking at the path. I’m sure they watched on their digital surveillance system and laughed their lemur asses off. – John]

Shoes are for the weak-footed; that's me

2007-08-11T03:15:00.000-04:00

[8/6/07 NOSY KOMBA --- Dear Christian, “Slippery, eh? Very careful, John.” That’s Gedeon, a 21-year-old Malagasy dude I met on the boat to this island and then climbed over its mountain with. He called out to me on our path down a steep slope of wet rocks. He then proceeded to skip down the trail with the grace of a gazelle. No need to heed his own advice, even in sandals without backs on them. I klunked my way down one cautious foot at a time. When we reached the base of the mountain, we had to climb across a rocky coastline to find the island’s main city, where we had started our journey about six hours earlier. It was all I could do to keep from rolling an ankle, but I saw several Malagasy people traversing the jagged terrain barefoot. Gedeon said it would be a pain to carry his sandals in his hands, otherwise he would be doing the same shoe-free waltz of death. (And this is coming me, a guy who hates shoes). Oh, and I almost forgot: on the way up the mountain, some of the inclines were so steep that a person with a large nose would be in a good position to smell the ground in front of him (or her), while walking. I saw a woman trudging up to her village, on the mountainside, with a bucket of laundry balanced on her head and no shoes on her feet. Boy do we clumsy Americans have things easy. This is a place of very impressive balance. ---SUTTER]

Rooster, party of one

2007-08-11T03:08:00.000-04:00

[8/6/07 NOSY KOMBA (LEMUR ISLAND) --- Dear Dad, I just took a boat with 29 people, two ice coolers and one rooster across a turquoise bay to an island called Nosy Komba, or Lemur Island. The rooster was, surprisingly enough, a good passenger. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that his feet were tied together with twine. When a man picked the rooster up by his feet, to take him out of the boat, the rooster craned his neck all around to see what the hell was going on. The boat was the same shape as a pirogue canoe, but was fiberglass and had a 15-horsepower motor on the back. Still not as cool as the 1960s olive green boat we used to take to Lake Arcadia. Love, John]

a small prize for anyone who can finish a burrito de rosa ...

2007-08-10T23:51:00.000-04:00

Rosa - see you in six weeks. love, Jessie

p.s. your burritos may be the size of a small cadillac, but they're literally the best thing i've ever put in my mouth.

when i first came to the black cat hostel two weeks ago, i was kind of at a low point in my travels. they stuck me in the room across from the kitchen (which i hated) and it smelled like guacamole (which i love) and every morning i had to listen to the head cook and her crew of workers come in at 6 a.m. to start the day.

breakfast here is free, so EVERYBODY and THEIR DOG orders it.

i would lie in my bed for at least two hours listening to how someone's cousin is pregnant, and someone else's relative is just plain getting fat. jose is working again, but paz has fallen on hard times. don't get me wrong, it's helped my spanish immensely, but i find myself more fluent in local soap operas than actual conversation.

until i met rosa.

she's the head cook, works at least nine hours a day, and tonight, on my last day here at the Black Cat, she sat down with a stupid gringa and we spoke spanish for 30 minutes. i'm leaving the hostel tomorrow to go stay with a family in Antigua as part of my immersion program, but i'll be back in six weeks. i study for four hours during the day and then i'll be at the black cat bartending at nights. free room, free food, and the company of a woman named rosa who wakes up at 5 a.m. to make food for about 90 people every day. it's really all i could ask for.

say heyyyyyy ahhhhhh....

2007-08-10T23:47:00.000-04:00

To every white kid who ever got made fun of for listening to hip hop-

I feel you ... just keep bobbing your head and waving at the haters. because tonight, when i found myself completely alone in a foreign country, loving the culture but hating the hostel and the countless mistakes i've made so far, hip hop made my 4 x 4 feet room feel like home. so i kept packing, and flipped the glass windows open so kanye and his rhymes could flow out into the hallways to the swedish and canadian tourists, who peered in and were surprised to find a white girl bobbing her head and shakin' it like a polaroid picture ...

2007-08-10T23:40:00.000-04:00

Amy -
Hostel living was fun for about two days, agreed? just wanted to let you know you definitely made the experience. thanks for your company, slipping me drinks while you were working bar, sharing the surreal experience of working out in a Guatemalan gym while listening to music from the earlier 1990s, and saying what needed to be said to that one jerk when i didn't have the guts to do it for myself (that last one is somewhat of a tangent, so i'll only divulge if asked)

i leave the Black Cat with extensive knowledge of the magic that is a cuba libre cocktail, an intense appreciation of my privacy after finding i had none, and a certain liking for bootlegged dvd's that the german kids brought and watched in the tv room, totally pretending that the film wasn't taken by a shaken hand in some theater in Normandy ... and in case there was any question as to the movie's authenticity, please know that in a copy of "Ocean's Twelve" people repeatedly were captured on film, walking across the screen. when i asked Hans about it he pretended he didn't know what i was talking about: "Vat? Vat du you mean?"

27 - countries the people i met at the Black Cat were from
43 - drinks consumed to forget about hostel life
12 - times i was shocked by the electric-heated showers
5 - really cool people who run the place, made the stay worth while, and offered me a job and a bed after i'm done taken spanish courses in six weeks.

thanks guys, Jessie

2007-08-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

Dear Lady at the Army Navy Story -

Thanks for your advice. The bag you sold me literally fits everything i own. but it's so heavy, i've realized it's either going to be the death of me ... or help me smuggle a full sized guatemalan back into the states before i leave. - Jessie

sidenote: selling everything to go live in a foreign country? sounds really cool in theory. realizing everything you own fits on a small bed? disconcerting in every way possible.

To be dirty, or to be without feeling from the waist down ...

2007-08-10T23:29:00.000-04:00

Cameron -

So, you forgot to tell me about the electric-heated showers in Latin America. i've freaking shocked myself about 12 times. i didn't even know i was doing it until i told a friend that my arm kept going numb everytime i turned the shower on and off. one day i literally stopped feeling from my elbow down. my friend offered the following advice over breakfast the other day:

"Dude, I think you're getting electrocuted..."

i'm willing to give up certain necessities in living the traveling lifestyle. i will live in communal housing, i wander through a city fumbling through spanish as i try to find a bank willing to convert my money into local currency, i will brace myself in dealing with the ... "upfront" ... gestures latin american men use to get your attention, i will buy papas fritas from a street vendor and call it dinner in order to save money, but i seriously almost lost it with the shower thing.

just don't be surprised if my next post is from a hospital.

Don't like being called Vazha

2007-08-10T19:49:00.000-04:00

[8/3/07: Dear John, I was feeling so good about myself until she walked in the door. Just moments ago, I wrote a postcard about how I am practicing my French even though I look like a fool. I was starting to communicate, starting to feel at home. The power went off in my hotel, so I decided to go hang out in the bar up on street level (my room is two floors below the street), one building over. I heard them playing reggae music last night. I brought my book, postcards and camera to the bar since it’s 5 o’clock and I figure I might have some time to kill. I guess, in retrospect, I couldn’t have looked more of a tourist. And I’m sure my nose is sunburned to a Rudolph red, since I’ve been walking around outside all day. Here’s what I wrote from the bar:
This woman walked in a moment ago. She has stained-blonde braids in her hair and a light-blue tank top that says “BOOST STYLE” on it. I can’t tell what she’s saying, exactly, but I do know that she is staring straight at me with cat-like brown eyes, and is squawking like a toucan. This is not an “I want to get to know you stare.” I can tell because every other world out of her mouth is “vazha.” Vazha this, vazha that. She laughs, her friends laugh, then they all look back to me, and laugh again. Vazha means white person in Malagasy, and it’s not a nice thing to say. Just as the situation was making my shoulders tense up and my hands fidget, she decided to make her point readily clear: “I want for you to leave here, VAZHA.” She pursed her lips. My shoulders are now more tense. I don’t know where to point my eyes, so I am planting them, and my pen, on this page. I will drink my beer. Then leave. Don’t let her win. When I do go I will say “aza fady Madame” (my bad, ma’am, in Malagasy), so she thinks I understood everything.
I didn’t. And I don’t.
I stayed in my room the rest of the night. – John]

Trying not to cough in English

2007-08-10T19:45:00.000-04:00

[8/03/07 Dear Lyons, This whole “speaking French” thing isn’t so terrible. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am an American parrot walking around the rutted streets of Madagascar, cawing “Bonjour” “Bonjour” at everything I see. When I first got here, I felt like my coughs were coming out in English. Now, at least I’ve got the greeting down. And I’m building. I just got back from an hour taxi-ride around this tropical island with Nicolas, a cab driver. The mountain I wanted to climb was too far away, and it was getting dark, so he gave me a tour instead. We talked about volcanoes, crater lakes (12 of them here), sugar cane fields and rum production plants. I understood almost all of it – and I didn’t even get ripped off. Best wishes in NYC, another land where things often seem foreign. – SUTTER]

How do you spell brain drain?

2007-08-10T19:39:00.000-04:00

[Dear Katy, All of Jean-Pierre Tomana’s life, Malagasy people have told him he’s too special – too gifted, too unique – for this country. The 50-year-old desperately wants to move to the U.S., where he says a friend has betrothed him to a Chicago real estate agent named Kathy, whom he’s never met. I told him that if that is his dream, he shouldn’t ever give up. He agrees. I can relate to this predicament – thinking you’re called to go far away from home to do something else, or being told that. The trouble with that mode of thinking is that you don’t appreciate where you are and where you’re from. Conversely, if you never chase your dreams, what kind of life are you living? Jean-Pierre is a tour guide, and is amazing at it. He knows everything about chameleons, the history of slavery, etc, and he speaks five languages. Makes me want to put my brain to better use. But it seems like he’s just doing it as filler work until he can find a way to get out, to bigger better things. It’s a strange spot to be in, but I’m sure he will be happy and successful no matter how his life turns out. He certainly got the wardrobe for America if he does make it: Kansas t-shirt, Nike hat, man-capri pants and boating loafers. Hope this card finds you back from Nepal safe and sound. – Sutter]

I see you baby ... and I'm telling my ancestors

2007-08-10T19:34:00.000-04:00

[8/03/07 NOSY BE, MADAGASCAR --- Dear Joe, Your pug, Margo, is cool. But I would rather have a pet chameleon. They have crazy googlie eyes that can look for bugs in all directions … and, you know, they change color and all that. Females are red. Males are neon green. But they turn black at night to hide on branches and things. Malagasy people are moderately terrified of them (think me and clowns) because they are messengers (think Sarge the prairie dog) to a cult of ancestors who will curse you if you’re up to no good. Keeping it clean, SUTTER]

Ylang-ylang smack-down

2007-08-10T19:29:00.000-04:00

[8/03/07 NOSY-BE MADAGASCAR --- Dear Grandma, The ylang-ylang trees here look like shriveled old trolls, hunched down as they crawl up and down tropical mountain slopes. Workers hack off their branches so the arms of the tree and their fragrant, valuable flowers droop near the ground, where they easily can be picked. Otherwise, these knotty stumps would sprout into 40-foot-tall trees. They would be beauties. An Indian-owned company, SPPM Madagascar, boils the flowers, extracts their oils and sells it to perfume makers in France. The small of the factory is intense – one worker told me it gives him a constant headache.
Love you, and hope you are doing very well. See you at Christmas. – John]

Haunted forests, haunting history

2007-08-10T08:59:00.000-04:00

[8/03/07 MARODOCANA, MADA --- Dear John, I nearly jumped back this morning when I saw a golden spider perched on its web, blocking my path out of a small village called Marodocana. “He’s a good architect,” said Jean-Pierre, my guide, who is prone to glass-half-full thinking. “Here in Madagascar, God has blessed us. We have no poisonous things.” That was a relief, but J-P still had to coax me close enough to take a good picture. We had just visited a largely abandoned village that once was the center for commerce and the slave trade on Nosy Be, an island of Madagascar’s northern coast. Indian and Arab slave traders came here between the 900s and 1884, J-P said, to take Malagasy into slavery elsewhere, and to bring African slaves into this area. Local kings bought and sold slaves. Some of the enslaved Malagasy were dehumanized by Malagasy kings to the point that they were forced to gather up royal spit and urine, lest it stay on the ground, where local witches could curse it. Many locals still believe this area is haunted (witches, broomsticks and all), and they beg Jean-Pierre not to walk through these eerie forests. He doesn’t buy it. – John]

Hell-Ville haikus

2007-08-10T08:42:00.000-04:00

[8/2/07 HELL-VILLE, MADACASCAR --- To John: A couple of haikus based on my day in Hell-Ville (which is much nicer than it sounds).

nurses in nun’s habits with
clean, green flip flops.
they’re the only ones,
in this dusty country

ceiling fan sways in motion
cold shower snap
reggae music through concrete walls

foot steps on steep stairs
girl screams ---
it’s a gecko

Thinking of you, John]

10,013 miles away, but still close to home

2007-08-10T08:24:00.000-04:00

[8/2/07 NOSY BE, MADAGASCAR --- Dear Dad and Mom, This postcard has traveled a couple of miles today, nestled in my pocket. By plane, it will travel thousands more miles (hopefully) to reach you. Its message is a simple one: Strange how the further you travel from home, the closer you feel to it. Love you, and hope all is well with the fam. See you soon(ish). Love, John]

Johnny Cash in Hell-Ville

2007-08-10T06:03:00.000-04:00

[8/2/07 NOSY BE, MADAGASCAR – Dear Bzdega, I arrived on Madagascar’s Big Island last night. Right now, I’m sitting in a café in the largest city here, which, no joke, is called Hell-Ville. Really. The founder was named Admiral de Hell. Anyway, I thought of you because of the sounds I hear around me: revving engines of motorcycles, French conversations I barely understand and the sweet, sweet, familiar voice of Johnny Cash, floating across the street from an orange building with palm trees in front of it. This card will be in my pocket all day. Hopefully it will be with me as I find some interesting animals – maybe a lemur. Best of luck in frozen Michigan. – SUTTER]