Coffee House Rules

With a cold gust of wind and a heavy pull on an old door, we left the empty street for a hazy coffee house. The fresh air in our lungs was instantly replaced that of smoke. Usually, I would be offended, but in the coffee house with old wooden chairs and cloth covered couches, it seemed more than appropriate. We sat at a small round table at the middle of the room, quietly staring. Posters covered an entire wall, they ranged from huge tapestry-like announcements of new museum exhibitions, to small print-outs informing the artistic audience of the next gig. The rest of the walls consisted of a bar, a full window that overlooked the street, and a more subdued wall with well-spaced framed art. This was my first coffee house in Vienna; it reminded me of a book I had read a long time ago. This was where the Radicals, rebels to Vienna’s formal and classical schools of thought, had fled to. It was here they discussed their philosophies, played chess, debated whether Hitler was good for Austria or not. The waiter came and went dressed in a tuxedo that seemed lavishly out of place, even on principal—the Radicals were against capitalism and embraced the socialist ideal of equality.

My chair in the center was conveniently facing a table that seated people who were made to be written about. The first couple was sitting next to each other drinking coffee. They were in love. Two very strong, artificial blonde Aryan men, whispering and smiling, touching each other on their shoulders, legs, necks. After they had gone another couple replaced them. This time it was older tattooed woman, wearing thick red lipstick and her partner in crime sporting a great handlebar mustache that formed a giant square arc around his mouth. He was wearing a great leather vest. The two that would look right at place straddling a Harley, were instead eating delicate pastries and mulling over a newspaper. The third and final character was, undoubtedly, the most Viennese. A hefty old man wearing a V-neck sweater and a newspaper boy cap. He sat down and ordered a snack of anchovies on buttered bread along with a coffee, his top lip hidden under the most ideal white mustache. He spent considerable time packing and lighting a wooden pipe which was clenched between his graying teeth. Upon lighting it to his satisfaction, he then strolled around the room puffing the scent of sweet tobacco like a one-man train. We left Café Hawelka long after the smell of his pipe had dissipated.

Chopin Dessert

Walking into the Music Hall was like stepping into a Napoleon, but instead of the rich layers of cream and pastry the building layered dessert of gold and wood. Everything gleamed. We stood and attempted to digest it all. Carved women looking eternally voluptuous held up the balconies. In the center of the stage, a magnificent black piano demanded our attention. The audience consisted of heavy fur coats and pearls. An older generation was sitting elegantly in the seats, while the young ones who only had 6 Euros to spare were standing in the back. It was warm and close in the room, a perfect medium for Chopin. I drifted as the music began. I thought about the Count of Monte Cristo, how he must have looked in a room not to different from this. I thought about the dresses and the highly-styled hair the women used to have. A loud note would call me back to the concert. But then the music would make me think about people, emotions, places, and I would be off again. Fans circulated slowly, hung carefully from painted ceilings, as if they were stirring honey. Mixing the shimmering gold and people’s thoughts.

Bratislava

Empty trees and red tiles on a few roofs broke the monotony of heavy whiteness that connected air and earth.

Classic buildings complete with white molding and dark wood accents adjacent to those of a severely square concrete description.

A government initiative had begun painting the cement blocks. Out of the ashes of communism rose Caribbean-colored buildings.

They stood out, but not as much as the fluorescent signs advertising the sex shops.

We climbed the winding stairs to the castle that overshadowed the icy Danube.

The path smelled like snow and cigars. The covered cobblestones held the scent and the trampled footsteps of those that had gone before.

From the top, I could see back in time. A bustling city criss-crossed with tram lines, a river heavy with trade, the ruling Hapsburgs.

Wandering back down, the years went back and forth. New restaurant, old opera house, new tram, old tram, McDonalds.

The people could be from both times. Old coats, heads down, white beards or high heels, dyed hair, four-door sedans.

A woman with a baby carriage was standing outside the main church. We brushed through the door to look inside. It was crowded with people standing in the back, a reminder I was not in England. We left when they fell to their knees on a Wednesday morning. The woman with the child knelt on the cold stone outside, her orange jacket stuck to the eyes that weren’t there for ashes.

Leaving London

It was like my birth, like the foggy blades of grass in the morning. It was morning, and I was wet, but not at all surprised. London has never been held in high esteem, for me, weather-wise. I needed a printer to get my boarding pass, so my last day in the Great Smoke turned from a simple affair of a bus ride to a train station into an urban safari. I was both explorer and pack mule…during morning rush hour. After fifteen minutes of walking like a spawning salmon against the current of business suits and black umbrellas, I was surprised my eyes hadn’t been gouged out. As I reached the end of my patience and ability to haul my bags, which were getting heavier with each minute in the rain, I glanced into a travel agency that hadn’t yet opened. A young man’s face was illuminated by a computer screen in a dark room. Okay, I thought, please be a Good Samaritan. I knocked and caught my breath. He came to the door. I began to gush like some overzealous fountain—asking for the favor, some sort of explanation, apologies. I attempted to look needy, but attractive. In actuality, I’m sure I came across as desperate and crazy. My plastered to my head with rain, a strange mix of clothes that didn’t make it into my suitcase, sweat trickling its way down the small of my back, my low rise jeans slunk to an indecently level beneath my hips.

This was an adventure. As I was gratefully printing out my pass, I came to the conclusion that in order to make the more miserable situations bearable, I must look at everything as an adventure. And when you’re carrying 4/5 of your weight in luggage, things are bound to be more interesting.

Marhaba (welcome) Jordan

Driving in from the airport felt familiar, probably because I was once again crammed into the backseat of a minibus, the differences were that this van was made in this millenium, and the A.C. worked.

Marhaba Jordan

The landscape from the airport seems to set the mood for the night. Dark clouds reflected green from the symmetrical rows of scrubby olive trees. A sort of rocky landscape with rare tufts of grass leaping out of the hills, an almost gale force wind, making the 60 degrees seem much cooler. It seemed inhospitable, and a definite contrast to Ghana. Jordan didn't come across as unfriendly, but instead guarded and a little skeptical. Maybe I was just tired. In hindsight, I think it was all the security checks that made me feel guarded--for getting to the gates, another for getting on the plane, one and then another before leaving the airport, a final one before getting into the hotel--the last one came with a woman with an apologetic smile behind a curtain who carefully patted me down. I think I also felt apprehensive about the decadence--to me it has an illegitimacy and an almost unbearable pretentiousness. I have no idea why, but I knew that the oil rich countries would spoil me, I just had to get into the right mindframe.

After walking through the final checkpoint, I walked into a marble palace. Softly lit, the Sheraton had a few restaurants, a couple of pools, plush carpets, and wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-ceiling smooth, glazed stone. Its exterior matched, the rest of Amman. Geometric and white stone (doesn't absorb the heat). The city almost looked unfinished and unpainted. But when you rode close, you realized the devil was in the details. Windows of all different shapes, pillars of shapes, sizes and designs. Ornate gates garnished with neatly placed topiaries. Like the same people thousands of years ago, Jordanians built their homes into the hills.

The group of 14 finished the day with a hot meal from what I think was some sort of Jordianian fast food place. I had the lamb masfam (??) which is tender lamp buried in a rich creamy soup
with an almost tart yet buttery taste, to complete the sauce was a bowl of rice big enough to feed 3. I treated myself to backlava like treats for dessert, sweetened with honey the twirls of philo dough twisted carefully around sweetened nuts.

Tomorrow was Petra, the Dead Sea, and other adventures.

The Last Week

In about 6 days and 23 hours, I will be boarding a flight back home. A lot of the volunteers have asked each other, "Are you ready to go?" Most have been here a month, and most answer yes. I think I am mentally preparing myself to leave; I've started thinking about home more, about this up coming semester at WVU. I've started to daydream about the eating at Taco Bell at 2 in the morning and finding furniture for my new house. I think about the people I'm coming back to, the wonderful ones who have done all the sentimental things I could think of, including habitually stealing shotgun seats from me. Then I start thinking about the people that I am leaving. Tomorrow is my last day of camp, of work before a week of travel. In a way its relieving, not being around the refugees I won't feel as pressured to help them. But as somebody once told Spiderman, "With great power, comes great responsibility." I know I will never be able to ignore them, or tell myself, "No, you can help them tomorrow." Their stories are with me, just like the first post I put on here about the tree and the skeleton, just like Tennison's Odiseus: I am part of all that I have met, yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world whose margins fade forever and forever. I will miss the people that I have worked with, swapped Ipods with, shared the same plate, same spoon, same toilet, same room, same house, same experiences with. I will miss the marriage proposals (8 thus far), the constant attention, but at the same time I will be so relieved to just be able to be by myself again. To be with you guys again.

My email is currently being butt, so write me comments on here or facebook. Thanks Karen, I got your message and I love you too.

Charged

Current, as in electricity, in the camp is sporadic at times. Sometimes, we will go to bed with the whole world dark, and the curvature of this world etched by the stars, then wake up at 2 with all the lights in the house on. Such is life, and this is Africa. I wish I could write more, and I wish I could better describe this past week than with the hasty words of a time-rushed woman. Last week was amazing and terrible. My first week in Accra in May, I met these British medical students whom I "clicked" with immediately; they were the people I visited in Kumasi. Well one of them traveled across the country and spent the week at a nearby hotel, hoping to get work at the one clinic on camp. We had a competition of how many countries we've each been to, and he beat by one. It was really awesome and Tim ended up helping out with CBW, we talked until all hours of the night, so this past week lacked quite a few of the usual hours of sleep. He picked up the slack of some other workers and helped out at the summer school the international volunteers put together. A side note: this is a free summer program for half a day, providing free bread and water to about 300 students. Well since it started last week, the numbers were fluctuating and at one time there were 65 3-5 year olds for one teacher! Which is why I have stopped with the HIV/AIDS outreach and am now helping with the ABC class (the young ones)....which makes me really realize the importance of using a condom!!!!
Well one afternoon, I found out that a two year old twin boy died of dehydration. He was the first child I picked up when I came to camp and would stand outside one of the volunteer houses in yellow underwear and do karate moves under a tree. Tragic, heartbreaking, unfair the words to describe it come easily. Maybe even relief, here was a child that had escaped the confines of the camp, by heeding to the raw wrath of survival. Was he saved, if so what from? Knowing a child that has died made me question everything. What kind of world is this, where 5 months ago, I was paying $8 for a plate of food or taking a 20 minute shower. The little things, the lack of equilibrium. It changes you, I know I've changed. I don't really know what else to say. I ended up climbing up an abandoned building in a field outside of camp and watching the African sun set behind an African mountain and thinking about life. Dehydration and completely preventable, but in a swing of rationality everybody dies.

I leave a week from Monday. I wish I didn't have to, I love it here, I love most of the people. I think when I come home I will be fairly disgusted by the daily living of most Americans until I succumb to the materialistic consumerism that rules the middle-class, relative wealth sucks because its not how much you have that matters, people forget about that, it's about how much more you have.

The skies here are amazing. Grace the lady I helped with the 2 month old baby was reunited with her brother from the war this past 2 days. She hadn't seen him since she was 11 and now she's 26! He lives in Ghana 4 hours away and was told that he looked like a lady that sold fish in the camp so he came and saw and sure enough it was his sister, his and her only form of blood family for over a decade! It was emotional in the highest form of the word, seeing the two of them together; they have each other now. I found out that she was raped during the war, more than once.