Tattoos

One of my faithful readers (perhaps the only one remaining) has just e-mailed me for the second time in as many months asking for my blog address, again. She is apparently very embarrassed that she keeps losing it (as well she should be--one would think that someone who earns a living as an IT journalist would know how to bookmark a website!) and promises that she will never lose it again, because she's going to have the address tattooed on her left buttock.

So I thought that if she's willing to submit to bodily mutilation to be able to read my blog again, the least I can do is give her something new to read.

Here's a summary of the past month of my life:

- August 21: furniture and belongings finally delivered from France, after weeks of delays and annoying negotiations with French moving company and U.S. moving agent about whose fault it was that the shipment was stuck in the U.S. customs port for 10 days, incurring $1500 in additional storage costs, and who had to pay aforementioned costs. (Good news: it wasn't me!)

- August 22-25: unpacked bedding, so as to be able to start sleeping in my new apartment in St. Paul; moved most other belongings from temporary apartment in Minneapolis to permanent new place in St. Paul; waited in vain for my passport and West Africa visa to arrive from DC in time for my scheduled August 24 departure for West Africa; had to delay trip 2 days; do not unpack any boxes (except aforementioned bedding).

- August 26-September 6: go to West Africa (see two previous posts); get dysentery.

- September 7-12: return to St. Paul for a business conference; recover from dysentery; prepare for trip to North Africa; do not unpack any boxes.

- September 13: get phone call from mother at 7 a.m. (confusedly try to answer cell phone on nightstand, pulling charger out of plug and flinging cell phone across room before realizing that it's actually the fixed line ringing in the other room) to tell me that my father is hospitalized with acute pancreatitis. Spend day waiting to hear how serious it is, to determine whether I should delay trip to North Africa. Also discover car is leaking oil, so scurry to find trustworthy garage open on Saturday in new hometown and try to decide if should leave car in garage while away or must keep car to rush to Mankato if father is seriously ill. Or maybe shouldn't drive to Mankato in car leaking oil. Or if father not too ill, need car to drive to friends' joint birthday party that night. But really should get car fixed while away. And so on with decision loop until news arrives that father will be okay, just needs gall bladder removed; I should go to North Africa; I find car garage open on Saturday and leave car there and friends drive me to party; do not unpack any boxes.

- September 14-19: go to North Africa; do not get dysentery; call mother on Tuesday, hear that father is doing well, she promises to let me know if any changes; call mother on Thursday, find out father has been in ICU since Tuesday night (she didn't call because she "didn't want to worry" me) due to seizure, chest cavity filled with blood, collapsed lung, other badness; she assures me father will be okay now; get off phone and decide that it's stupid to remain in North Africa on Friday when only have one meeting scheduled, so call travel agent and get departure moved from Saturday the 20th to Friday the 19th; arrive at MSP at 10 p.m. on Friday. (Note to self: for future trips, if have choice, will always choose to have dysentery myself rather than father with blood-filled chest cavity.)

- September 20-21 and beyond: in Mankato, sitting with father and family at hospital. Dad got out of ICU on Friday evening and is gradually getting better. We're still waiting for the inflammation of his pancreas to go down (extra credit to those of you taking Biology this semester: please describe the location and function of the pancreas, or simply donate your own for my father's use), and then they'll remove his gall bladder. Maybe later this week, or maybe he'll come home for a few weeks and then go back in for the surgery.

For the time being, my boxes remained packed and piled in unnavigable and teetering towers in my new apartment. But they'll get unpacked eventually (maybe by Christmas?!). They're not going anywhere, and neither am I. Right now, I'm glad to be living in Minnesota, right where my family needs me to be.

I might even be willing to get that tattooed on my left buttock.

My Fabulous Jet-Setting Life

I'm back in Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport (I think this is my 4th post from here--please can I just write "CDG" and trust that my readers are sufficiently cosmopolitan to understand) and was all set to taunt you with the fabulousness of my life: the food poisoning followed by days of an all toast-and-Sprite diet, the hours of waiting in a hot and humid airport for a midnight flight, the night spent in a cramped seat praying for it all to be over, followed by my morning ablutions in an airport bathroom (I washed my face with hand soap and then realized that the airport roller towel was jammed and I was going to have to dry my face on a soggy and previously used bit of cloth). But they've started boarding my 7? 8? hour flight to JFK, which will be followed by a 3-hour flight MSP.

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to doing this all over again a week from tomorrow, when I leave for North Africa! I'd be glad to trade this glamourous life for two straight weeks at home to start unpacking the boxes from my move. OK, I'm off to sit in a teeny tiny seat some more.

P.S. This morning, at the airport snack stand, I discovered that the correct English translation of croissant is apparently "milk-bread pastry." I just thought you should know!

Family Matters

On Sunday, one of my colleagues at the Corporation's local affiliate in West Africa asked me to attend the presentation of his new baby at church. I asked him if it was his son's baptism, and he explained that he's an evangelical Christian, so they only do adult baptism, but this would be the formal presentation of his son to the congregation, and mark his entry into the church community. I felt very honored by this invitation: the opportunity to witness this important event in a friend's life, to meet his family, and to experience a church service in this country. Not even the realization that much of my day was bound to be spent without air-conditioning could dampen my soon-to-be-sweat-soaked spirits.

Another colleague was supposed to pick me up at the hotel between 9:30 and 9:45 on Sunday morning, so I assumed that meant that the service would begin at 10 am. Since my ride didn't show up until 10:30, and when we arrived at the church shortly before 11, the service was already well under way, I guess I'll never know exactly when it really started. But that didn't seem to matter much--the baby-presenting family was just driving up as we got to the church, and the service ended at about 1 pm.

The church is in a new building, made of concrete cinder blocks (you can see the walls in the photo below), with a corrugated metal roof. There were huge industrial-sized fans everywhere, so the temperature was bearable until about the last half hour or so. The congregation was seated in those plastic/resin lawn chairs, and I would estimate there were about 500 people there. They had a band (big drums, trumpets, electric guitars, etc.) and sound system with enormous speakers. The preachers (there were several, and the entire service was bilingual, with everything translated from French to English and vice versa--why, I'm not sure, since this country is almost entirely francophone, although it did have the benefit of making the service twice as long) were good, old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstoners, shouting for our salvation. Imagine all that amplified noise reverberating off bare concrete walls and a metal roof! I didn't even realize exactly how loud it was during the sermon until I saw a woman one row ahead of me taking her baby out of the church. As she was leaving, I vaguely wondered why, and then when she was just a few feet away from me, I saw from the baby's face that she was obviously crying very loudly. And I couldn't hear a peep from her, nothing but the sermon. Wow.

But I can tell you that for any of you who were worshipping God in a quiet, WASP-y way yesterday, that we made up for your lack of enthusiasm: Jesus was praised in West Africa! Shortly after I arrived, the preacher announced that now we would stand up and sing and dance and celebrate God. And so we did! The band played, the choir and the congregation sang, and everyone danced to the beat of the African gospel drums. Just in case the sound system didn't get the praise out into the whole neighborhood, many of the congregants had their own party-makers with them. A lot of people had white handkerchiefs that they waved in the air as they sang (or during important moments of the sermon); brightly colored plastic whistles were also a popular way to add to the jubilant noise; and I saw a couple of tambourines and paper trumpets out in the congregation as well.

My favorite part of the service was the celebration of the events of August. They asked people to come forward for marriage dedications, and at first I thought that it was some kind of blessing to follow up civil marriage ceremonies. It turned out that it was a blessing for all the couples who had a wedding anniversary in August. They were asked up on the stage/altar area and danced together to celebrate the gift of another year together. Then everyone clapped for them, and the couples cut a special cake and fed some to each other (after the service, the cake was broken into little crumbs, like communion bread, and distributed to the whole congregation). It was really quite lovely. After the marriage dedications, then people brought forth their babies for presentation. There were half a dozen or so being presented yesterday, and we crowded up to the front to stand in support of our colleague. Although the babies weren't baptized, the preachers anointed them with oil (literally, from a plastic bottle of vegetable oil).

The first photo shows me and several colleagues with the baby and his mother (to my right, in light blue) in the church after the service.

The second photo is of a few colleagues at the lunch reception--the man in dark blue is the baby's father, and the woman is his mother.

It's very interesting to me to talk to people here about their families. This is a country where polygamy was historically very common, although it's less so today. The father of one of my colleagues (the one in the black and white outfit, on the far left of both photos) had eight wives--my colleague's mother was the last one. When I asked him how it worked, if the wives fought or were jealous of each other, he just laughed and said that it all depended on how the husband handled everything. His father had a total of 48 children, and the family all lived together in a sort of complex with many houses. His father died several years ago, and all of the siblings gather once a year in memory of the father and to have a sort of family meeting, led by the eldest brother. They catch up on each others' news, support each others' business endeavors, and make sure that the youngest children have what they need to finish school (the youngest sister, who is my colleague's sister "same father-same mother" is still in college).

My colleague thinks that in the past, polygamy was a demographic necessity. There just weren't enough men, because of wars and the ravages of slavery. As the gender gap has narrowed, fewer men today are polygamous. My colleague who has 47 siblings has just one wife and one son and is very concerned because his new job at the Corporation here in the south of the country means that his wife is going to have to quit her job in the north to move here to be with him. He feels guilty that her career is taking second place to his and tells me proudly how good she is at her job. He also called her on his cell phone after the church service yesterday, so that she would be able to "meet" me over the phone, and yesterday evening, he stopped by the hotel with his little 7 year-old son, to introduce him to me as well.

It's really very touching to see how attached these men are to their families. When I was here in May, the father of the baby who was presented at church yesterday told me all about the maternity leave system and the problems he and his wife had to find good childcare for their two sons. In June, one of my colleagues in Washington was getting married, and the team in West Africa sent him a really beautiful e-mail, congratulating him on "this wonderful event in the life of a man." That phrase really struck me--maybe I'm wrong, but in the U.S., it seems to me that although we may congratulate a man on his engagement or his marriage, we really treat weddings as being more emotionally significant to the woman.

I come to this place full of judgement on the inherent sexism of polygamy and leave very moved by the grace and dedication the men I've met show to their families.