A Place by the Nile

One of the things that motivated me to take on this assignment in Khartoum is this city's location on the great river Nile. A place got to be interesting if it sits at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles.

So with the holidays difficult to spend with family back home, I decided to Airbnb-hop from a place in Khartoum central to this place by the Nile in Khartoum North. The place had been vacant for a while evidenced by pigeon poo all around the house. But there is the garden with a gazebo by the Nile and the balcony with a view of the Shambat bridge connecting Khartoum North and Omdurman. 

A triad of cities around a confluence and me just a little bit north of that point of merging, on the right bank of the united Nile flowing on, as it did for eons, towards Cairo. That much I know for now, at least situating myself geographically.

At this point where I'll stay put while the river flows on, I found among the dusty shelves of a little library at the entrance to the apartment, a paperback titled "Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure" by Tim Jeal. How fitting, I thought, for my desire to connect to the river.

Because the Nile stuck to my head in my reading of Tayeb Salih's classic "Season of Migration to the North" as the story of Mustafa Sa'eed weaves into the ebb and flow of the river. I always try, as a way of understanding a new country I'm going to, to read literature produced by its people. Salih's novels may or may not say much to the current Sudan humanitarian situation that I am supposed to support but his stories connect me to a past that the Nile was a witness to. 

I'll sit under the gazebo by the river and listen to what it tells me while I read Explorers of the Nile....

Back in the U.S.A.

I'm back in the U.S. to see my first grandchild. From where I'm sitting, in a suburban middle class neighborhood, I face a green backyard with a stand of trees that seamlessly merges into a network of trails, parks and other community recreational spaces, a public good that I have always marveled at and attributed to a successful democracy. This scenery doesn't look and feel at all like the broken America that we have seen and read about in the news. 

But as Michelle Alexander writes in the New York Times (America, This is Your Chance), "we know these truths about black experiences, but we often pretend we don't." She quotes from Stanley Cohen's "States of Denial": "Denial may be neither a matter of telling the truth nor intentionally telling a lie. There seem to be states of mind, or even whole cultures, in which we know and don't know at the same time."

I reflect on what I know and don't know about the black experience in America and I have to say I don't know what I know and don't know. I realize this more when I re-read an article on race that I wrote 22 years ago during a short stint as a columnist for the student newspaper at the University of Arizona. In "Dealing with Race", I see that despite studying then about systems of racial and social control, I still clung to the narrative that the brokenness is in our innate human nature and only manifested in broader systems. 

And maybe I still cling to that narrative. I too am outraged at the blatant violence and injustice done to George Floyd and Ahmad Arbery, just to name the most recent cases, but I have a long way to go on the key steps that Ms Alexander recommends are necessary "if we are to learn from our history and not merely repeat it": 1) We must face our racial history and our racial present; 2) We must reimagine justice; and, 3) We must fight for economic justice. 

For me, it is also a time of reflecting on what my American citizenship really means to me. I applied for citizenship in 2002, about 18 years into my marriage to an American citizen to whom I am married for 35 years now. I can't remember now why I decided to apply at that time or what it meant to me to become a U.S. citizen. But if patriotism has any meaning, it would be for me to start caring enough to understand what my adopted country is going through, it's racial history and its racial present, and to fight for the democratic ideals that it is great about.

Becoming a grandmother

Our first grandchild, a boy, arrived just after midnight, EST, today, two weeks earlier than expected. I wanted to be there in person to welcome him into the world and to be there for my daughter-in-law and son. But such as it is, we get to meet this new member of the family, on our screens, so close yet so far away.

I look at the photo of my hours-old grandson nestled safely on the bosom of his tired but smiling mother and I see life and the future amidst all the deaths and uncertainty in this time of pandemic.

I am now a grandmother. I think I know what it means but this new role is just starting to sink in. I imagine myself huddling together with my grandchildren reading Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, A Very Hungry Caterpillar, and other favorite books that we've read over and over to our three boys when they were small. I have saved some of these books, waiting for the day when we can go silly again with words and pictures on pages.

 

Or maybe write and illustrate a children's book myself. I've always loved doodling and drawing and even dreamt of becoming an artist. These dreams die early on then reconsidered at a later stage in life when doing art feels less conflicting with having food on the table and a roof over one's head. 

I want to tell my grandson of false either-ors. Life is art. Live your dream in the ups and downs of time. Weave your dream into the nitty-gritty of everyday life. 

At 56 and becoming a new grandma, I want to tell that myself.

Marking the passing of time

Today, we come out of three days of full curfew in Jordan. The temperature has dropped by almost half, from the high 30s almost all of last week to low 20s, starting yesterday, along with a good amount of rain that washed the dust off the leaves of a rosebush, a citrus tree, and a grapevine just outside our bedroom window.

Today is also May 25, the 74th anniversary of Jordan's independence. No celebrations as usual (as in this video of an official ceremony in 2019) but citizens are encouraged to put out the Jordanian flag. We foreigners can only be thankful for being welcomed to wait out the pandemic here. 

When and how will the pandemic ends still hangs in the air but that we try to have a sense of control with other end and start dates that make us ask what's open and what's closed. Like the last day of Ramadan and the first day of Eid al Fitr, which were a day later than expected since the moon was not sighted as expected on Friday. So, today is the 2nd day of Eid. Are stores open? Can we now buy beer or wine somewhere?

In the U.S., May 25, the last Monday of May of this year, is Memorial Day, a day supposed to honor the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Perhaps, there will be a memorial day to remember the people, like health workers, who have worked and died on the frontlines of the fight against the spread of covid-19.

I am not on any frontline of any fight but rather watching, learning, waiting, mostly in front of (or behind) my computer screen, in a foreign country. Over the weekend, I've read the NYT Magazine and chuckled at stories of how some people are dealing with the blurring of days staying at home. Without the familiar, regular routines that structured our days previously, we are all trying not to fall in on ourselves, like countries turning inward and struggling to answer what opening up again to the outside world would mean.

Impotence and action

I was a bit crabby today at my husband. I told him I don't want to see another link to an article (like this one) telling me how the health system in Yemen couldn't cope with the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases. We've heard that for months now, even before the first confirmed case was reported back on April 10, weeks after almost all countries have already gone into closures, lockdowns, quarantines, curfews and so on. And we're now in mid-May...

I guess it is this feeling of impotence in the face of this kind of humanitarian crisis in a country like that. We're lucky to be here in The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan where the leadership seemed to have taken the bull by its horns early on and is diligently monitoring and responding to the situation as it evolves.

What can an individual do beyond wearing masks and gloves and social distancing? I retreat back in front of my computer where I have been losing myself in online courses, earning badges and certificates, and cranking up loads of job applications. I need to be where there is some action or at least read some stories of action.

And so I was drawn to this on-demand, online PMXPO 2020 sessions, particularly the keynote address by a woman, Cara Brookins, who, along with her four minor children, built her own house based on knowledge gained from watching YouTube videos. At first, I thought, c'mon. But this is via the reputable PMI and, I must admit, these kinds of individual stories of grit appeal to me, especially in these times when the role of the state looms large in solving issues.

So, I register and access Cara's keynote address. She started off with her past experience with domestic abuse and violence and I go, Oh man, please no sob story, I've had enough of Yemen's sob story! But it's Friday, full curfew in Jordan, temp has gone up into the mid-30s and my plants want a break from me. So, I continue listening. I got glued to Cara's story. It wasn't so much about the house. It was about building a family, a team, building character, using what is already inside of us, to act big, to bring something into fruition out of scratch. 

I don't want to sound fluffy but I have to say the story is beyond inspiring. It makes me think of possibilities beyond the formal frameworks, matrices, phases and stages, cycles, and so on that we use to think about project or program management. 

The speaker passes on the hammer to us and ask us what we can do with it in our particular projects. Think big. Do the hard thing. What's the worst that could happen? Do over. Show up. Climb your mountain.

Where have all the flowers gone?

No, this is not about Pete Seeger's song. I'm just reacting to this NYT article "Where Have 140 Million Dutch Tulips Gone? Crushed by the Coronavirus."

I tell myself, oh well, it's only flowers. Non-essential. But it is more than about flowers. It's about millions of people missing out on the bounty and beauty of spring, at least in the northern hemisphere.

Or maybe it's about spring itself - budding, sprouting, blooming - doing what it does every year and I realize, perhaps with a sense of desolation (as in God has forsaken us), that nature is oblivious to the ongoing suffering of humans around the world. That spring will pass hardly noticing that we humans are in big trouble.

But then again we do have all the time now to notice spring. In Amman for example, we have curfew from 6 pm to 10 am the next day, which means that from 10 am to 6 pm each day, one can always take a break from working from home and walk the streets of one's neighborhood to notice wisteria vines in full purple bloom, wildflowers covering empty lots, new leaves on grapevines and olive trees..
It is during these walks that I feel so privileged to have this time, this time to pause, look, touch, think, breathe. And yet, and yet, feelings of wonder and hope mix with feelings of indescribable anxieties. There is certainty that spring will pass into summer, into autumn, into winter then the seasons will start all over again. But there are so many uncertainties as to what 'normal' cycle we humans will go back into as things we cannot see, like this coronavirus, may stay with us for quite a while.

It is now even hard to imagine history repeating itself as Pete Seeger's song suggests - girls pick flowers, men pick girls, wars pick men, men go to graveyards, flowers cover graveyards.

Those millions of Dutch tulips went straight into their own graveyard... 

Post-Easter ruminations

Person1: "The body of Christ given for you." [Holds out a plate of crackers.]
Person2: "Amen" [Takes a piece of cracker.]

Person1: "The blood of Christ shed for you." [Holds out a glass of wine.]
Person2: "Amen" [Dips cracker into glass of wine and puts cracker in mouth.]

[Reverse roles]

My husband and I never thought we'd be administering communion to each other this way. We always thought this was only done by either ordained priests/ministers or designated laypersons. But we agreed that it was a way to fully participate in an Easter service put up on YouTube by our local church back in Portland, Oregon. [We also had the option of attending another service by Zoom and we did attend the virtual coffee hour via that app in between services.]

One more thing to add to the list of 'unprecedenteds' in our lives in this time of Covid-19...

In any case, it was good to connect to a faith community - something that we took for granted as we went about our so-called humanitarian work around the world, becoming "Easter Christians" in the process. As if being strong in one's faith goes against the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence...When maybe, in fact, having a strong base of faith (be it Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, etc.) frees oneself to truly advocate for these principles to meet the needs of populations we are supposed to serve.

But it's easy to go on with humanitarian work because of the privileges it provides - travel, R&R, danger or hardship pay, per diems, etc. or because one could not earn this much or enjoy travel and other benefits with a regular job back in the U.S. It's easy to get lost in these perks and stay in the sector because it is comfy. It's easy to get cocooned comfortably in secured compounds, houses or apartments and not worry about not being able to pay the rent at the end of the month.

There are good reasons to professionalize humanitarian work and make it competitive, benefits-wise, with job markets of other sectors. There are good reasons to keep humanitarian actors as safe as possible. But sometimes, one seeks to strip the work of all its wrappings and be able to ask one's self, will I seek to serve the needy if I only get paid this much or if I may have to sacrifice personal comforts or even my life?

That would be the next unprecedented...or perhaps a return to some precedent before we erected all these structures in how we respond to the world's humanitarian crises?

Pink moon, Pearl Harbor and Hydroxychloroquine

Yeah. After a while things get
All mixed up in your head.
But you look up to the sky
Looking for the Pink Moon
Nick Drake on your ears
U.S. officials talking about
Pearl Harbor moments
Hy-droxy-chloro-quine
Got that?
What have you got to lose?

Pandemics and burial procedures

It has become part of my routine each morning - looking at the numbers in Johns Hopkins Covid-19 map - confirmed cases, deaths, recovered, particularly for Jordan where I am, the U.S. states where my children are, and the Philippines where my brothers and sisters live. As if the rise and fall of these numbers can somehow give some logic to a creeping anxiety about death and dying.

Of course they don't. The deaths are not mere numbers or even bodies. They are grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, spouses, children...

But we need to count the dead if only to properly deal with the practicalities not only of the health system but of the death system that societies have built as their duty to the dead. What is the capacity of morgues and funeral parlors? How do we deal with cultural or religious burial practices and still be vigilant about the risks of further infection when dead bodies are handled improperly?

The WHO has put out an interim guidance on Infection Prevention and Control for the safe management of a dead body in the context of COVID-19. The Social Science in Humanitarian Action published a tool for Assessing key considerations for burial practices, death and mourning in epidemics.

In Jordan, after the first Covid-19 death was reported about a week ago, the Head of Jordan's National Center for Forensic announced a set of burial procedures for people who die of the coronavirus, including not washing the dead body, cremating it, and burying it in a concrete grave. These procedures are a stark departure from how Muslims normally treat their dead but the pace and scale of this pandemic probably justify giving the state the power to go against cultural norms if it means avoiding more deaths.

As individuals and communities, we are also adapting to ways that would have normally gone against tradition. Like other communal activities around milestones of life (births, marriages, graduations), memorial services are moving online during this time of crisis.

Yes, we are now accepting how this pandemic is changing every aspect of our lives, including how we bury our dead and mourn together. There will be more deaths in the days and months to come. We probably will have to live with all kinds of anxieties and will suffer scars long after this pandemic. We just hope we evolve better and stronger, together.

Covid-infodemic fatigue

I’ve been wanting to read and write something not related to covid-19 but here we are – in lockdowns, curfews, voluntary quarantines, etc. to keep this virus of the size between 0.08 and 0.12 microns from entering our bodies but force us to enter the digital realm where it’s hard not to let in terabytes of covid information flood our consciousness.

No wonder “Turkmenistan fights COVID-19 by banning the word 'coronavirus”.

I believe I have walked every street in Shmeisani and have mapped where every open grocery store is, not to mention which house I could rob of sprigs of creepers and other plants that I can easily transplant into this Airbnb’s garden spaces.

But I’m running out of garden dirt to dig and sow and I’ve run out of inspiration to write and draw. I’ve been checking my anger and latent depression over a withdrawal of a job that already had secure funding and for which I’ve put in so much energy learning and preparing for even without a contract while waiting for the visa to Yemen.

Mostly because I am a spouse of somebody and those who made the decision to withdraw their selection of me had a bitter experience with a wife who held the same role three years ago.

Who knows what happened then. But talk about disillusionment with decision-making processes in the humanitarian sector. I am the kind of person who will gladly accept personal loss for a common good but not this or in this manner.

But much of life, I think, is about getting over disappointments and losses and moving on, keeping an eye for things to improve and to celebrate.

Like that patch of dirt just outside of the gate of this Airbnb…

Seriously, I do still manage to summon the energy to keep myself abreast of conversations in the humanitarian sector like this ALNAP-led webinar I attended two days ago - Making aid work for people in crises. Questions of relevance that the humanitarian community has been talking about for years. Nothing new but it’s precisely that which make these topics important to open up again and again for discussion to explore and gain new insights as we cycle through similar crises but in different contexts and times.

So, yes, first, I need to be thankful for the abundance of information to work with and gather up the passion and the energy to contribute to solutions…

COVID and Climate

With abundant sunshine and temperatures going up to the mid-60s (Fahrenheit) for three days now in Amman, I cannot help but hope that hotter weather will soon be upon us and will kill off the coronavirus causing the global chaos we are in.

There is this preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) on medRxiv titled Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus likely to be constrained by climate which explores correlations between the incidence of positive cases and aspects of weather. The authors write that their models "support the view that the incidence  of the virus will follow a seasonal pattern with outbreaks being favored by cool and dry weather, while being slowed down by extreme conditions of cold and heat as well as moist."

Alas, the World Health Organization tells us in its Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Myth busters page that the virus can be transmitted in ALL AREAS regardless of climate - hot, humid, cold, freezing...The internal temperature of our bodies is still the main point of reference, not the external weather temperature, for assessing the spread of the virus. The WHO page notes that "The normal human body temperature remains around 36.5°C to 37°C, regardless of the external temperature or weather." It is our bodies that the virus seeks to replicate itself.

There is no escaping from diligent hand washing, social distancing and quarantines, for lord knows until when.

At least now in Jordan, the gov't is responding very carefully, in controlled measures, to the need of people to get daily necessities - see the Jordanian gov't's announcements and updates on the Covid curfew on Roya News.

And yes, there may not be evidence that the sun's heat will make the coronavirus slink away, but it sure is nice to have this glorious sunshine melt some of the anxieties away.

Hunker down, Gamble, Refuse outright...Human behavior in times of pandemics

Day 3 of the complete curfew in Jordan. It's a new world. I looked out of our wall and saw a cat lazily gliding down the street and eyeing a bird basking in the sunshine in the middle of the street. Are the non-human mammals and the aves contemplating to join that half-living/half-dead creature called coronavirus in taking over the world?

Not such a crazy thought if we the people cannot coordinate our range of behaviors to deny (or at least delay) giving the coronavirus a host to become alive and replicate itself. This article, Enforcing compliance with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions: Psychological aspects of a national security threat, explores threat in human behavior terms.

In the face of unknowns about the coronavirus, giving out clear messages on how to behave is, to say the least, difficult. I think most people are willing to comply and hunker down at home but will go out and about if given the chance. Too risky when people play it like a game of chance (see For Italians, Dodging Coronavirus Has Become a Game of Chance). But for a while, I was hoping the Jordanian authorities will at least allow individuals to go out for a walk as a form of self-care albeit at a distance from others (see for example Is It OK to Take a Walk? as applied to New York).   But on further thought, a complete curfew might just be the right approach as it leaves little room for equivocation about the seriousness of the situation.

Except for reports of about 400 arrested on the first day of the curfew, it appears to me that Jordan's 10M population are cooperating with their government, which appears to be doing its best to meet the people's basic needs. I see garbage, gas and water trucks going around, making sure basic services are being met. The gov't just announced that the curfew will not be eased on Tuesday as many people were hoping but announced a mechanism for delivery of basic needs to citizens. In a sense, we are all in for a global experiment on containment -which variables to manipulate, which ones to hold constant (are there such variables in this kind of situation?), which approach results in better outcomes...(The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst)

I'm just glad the sun has been coming out since yesterday. The weather here in Jordan was unusually cold and rainy as this lockdown was enforced. My husband and I are lucky to have an outdoor space to walk out to when we start to feel cooped-up. I could not go out to buy a shovel to dig up the garden but I found some putty knives and a screwdriver around the house. These worked out quite well to loosen up the earth to get sown with the seeds I bought four days ago. I imagine the bright face of a giant sunflower and the smell of fresh basil, thyme and oregano and I feel hope that, together, the human race will at least gain a little more strength and buy more time to fight these invisible, deadly viruses.

Wishing we can poop Covid away

If there is one measure of misinformation about COVID-19, it would be the number of emptied shelves of toilet paper. As far as I can read online, the symptoms of COVID-19 do not include a leaky anus. So why the panic buying of toilet paper?

This article tries to explain why. It cites one psychologist who says people hoard because there is "comfort in knowing that it's there. We all eat and we all sleep and we all poop. It's a basic need to take care of ourselves."

And so here comes the Dutch PM telling citizens to relax, saying there's enough toilet paper for 10 years that "We can all poop for 10 years."

I have to admit such potty talk made me laugh at the absurdity of panic-driven behaviors yet cannot deny the seriousness of the situation. This morning at 7 am, sirens from police cars patrolling the streets of Amman let us know the curfew in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has begun and we must take it seriously. Apart from the siren's wee woo, it is deathly quiet. Having raised three boys who are now in their 30s, I wonder how families with young, active children and living in apartments without outdoor space will cope until the curfew ends. Well, I know that's the least of our worries in the wider scheme of things but not hearing the normal movements of kids going to school or playing outside makes me feel like a blanket of doom has covered the earth.

Back to toilet paper, I am amused that there are websites on toilet paper history as well on the history of lavatory language. And if you are really curious about toilet paper consumption, you will know it is actually an important commodity tracked by market statistics. I like this one by the Observatory of Economic Complexity showing China as the top exporter and the U.S. as the top importer. A very nice relationship.

Still, this toilet roll hoarding behavior makes me think of how our perception of what the 'basics' are can become distorted. Fun facts on the Toilet Paper History website puts out this statistic that about 70 to 75% of the world's population do not use toilet paper. That is not such an outrageous percentage if you have lived at all in parts of the world where the cost of a roll of toilet paper can be more than the cost of a loaf of bread. I grew up in a very rural area of the Philippines and you don't want me to tell you the ways, other than water,  that we used to clean ourselves post-defecation. 

We think of water as the universal solvent, not paper, and then we wonder why bidets are not common in the U.S.?  This takes us into an interesting history of hygiene practices related to our most basic bodily functions. And here I'm looking at the design of the Toto Washlet or this Kohler bidet - . It gives me the sense that we have this most basic need to poop but wish we shouldn't be pooping at all.

Learning in the time of COVID

During the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-19, one advice offered to Americans was to avoid touching library books. In 2020, we are advised not to touch other people's keyboards, mice, and other electronic devices. But at least now, we can go online and enter a wide world of learning opportunities as we practice social distancing to help flatten the coronavirus curve.

Yesterday, I, along with 200+ plus other people from around the world attended ICVA's Virtual Annual Conference 2020, an event that would have been normally held in Geneva. The topic was Protecting principled humanitarian action: an honest conversation on risk. I sometimes find these discussions going in circles or not able to bridge the gap between broader frameworks (like political declarations) and field-level operational realities. But it's good to come together and try to discuss these things.

I wanted to post some questions but, still waiting to get a contract for my supposed next job, I didn't feel I am in a legitimate role to ask one. The example collaborative initiatives discussed at the last session focused on risk areas of safety, security and ethics (sexual harassment/violence). I wanted to know more about collaborative initiatives that address operational risk areas. Since we recognize that humanitarian operating environments are unpredictable and that risk is not always a negative, I wanted to ask what collaborative and principled initiatives or approaches are there for quickly identifying and maximizing unplanned opportunities to reach common objectives? How do we link these initiatives at field or operational level to larger initiatives such as political declarations and international legal frameworks?

Today, just to be informed beyond news reports and gov't announcements, I signed up for the free online course Science Matters: Let's Talk About COVID-19 -  offered on Coursera by the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) at Imperial College London. I'm also looking at the following resources:

• The COVID-19 Learning Pathway just set up by Save the Children on Kaya/Humanitarian Leadership Academy to enable humanitarians to respond to the global pandemic. 
• Remote Learning, EdTech & COVID-19 set up by the World Bank to support national dialogues with policymakers around the world on utilizing technology for remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lucky me. I have all this precious time on my hands (not to mention excellent internet service) and still the freedom to move around outside in the now quiet, almost deserted streets of Amman. As someone supposed to be working in the humanitarian sector, I cannot help but think of people who don't have the luxury of working from home and still earn a living or just the health workers who must go to work in hospitals to care for the sick. When gloom from the inability to do something sets in, I take a break from the screen and go for a walk. Today, I walked/run to my old neighborhood in Jabal Hussein (45 minutes each way) to look for seeds to plant in the small garden spaces of the Airbnb apartment in Shmeisani where my husband and I are staying. The nursery where I used to buy plants was closed but stores that sell food were open and I was lucky to find one that sold garden seeds too. I will dig the earth, sow the seeds and hope to watch seeds grow into plants. This always makes me happy.

In these first days of spring, rain and sunshine alternate in Amman. The air is crisp, some streets wet. The Covid-related closures definitely reduced traffic. A few people are out and about. There is a wariness about each other. We keep our distance. As a Filipino woman, I always felt strange walking long distances in Amman (a maid out and about perhaps?). It was more strange today, walking on near-empty streets otherwise busy with traffic or teeming with shoppers. But one keeps walking, not looking at anyone, but ready to offer a smile or gladly accept one when I entered the open stores. Fear and goodwill co-exists.

Back to my computer screen, I re-enter that digital world where one must exercise discipline to choose the right links to follow and the spaces to learn in. I'm ready to learn about pandemics and the basic reproduction number, phylogenetic analysis, the economics of outbreaks, etc. But it's easy to digress. I got a note from an aunt who wrote "I understand that the Millennials are referring to Coronavirus as “The Boomer Remover” but they aren’t gonna get me!" Haven't heard of that phrase before so off I go and searched for Boomer Remover. I'm 57 years old, not quite a Boomer but I kept following the links....age as a factor in pandemic fatality rates...

I'm not gonna get Covid get into my head too much. Perhaps, I should sign up for those pilates/yoga classes that I used to attend at ILI near the 4th circle but now offered via Zoom...

Higher education in time of war and disease

As with coffee and Yemen, there was no previous association in my mind between Yemen and China until I've met a few Yemenis who have studied in China. That association gained more details during this horrific global spread of the Covid-19 as I read Supreme Council continues to follow up on evacuation arrangements for Yemeni students in China (Feb 6) and later, UAE evacuates Yemeni students from China (Feb 20).

This got me curious how people in war-ravaged countries like Yemen manage to continue their education despite the odds, particularly those who were able to get out and study in another country, in this case China. I do not know the individual stories of the 187 Yemeni students evacuated from Wuhan. From where I'm sitting, I can only look up online and learn a little bit more in terms of numbers.

I was not able to find stats on Yemeni students abroad in any functioning Yemeni government website for education or foreign affairs but found some Chinese gov't data on international students in China. The latest that I can find is this Statistical report on international students in China for 2018 which gives a total of "492,185 international students from 196 countries/areas pursuing their studies in 1,004 higher education institutions in China’s 31 provinces/autonomous regions/provincial-level municipalities..." It's hard to tell how many of this almost half a million students are from Yemen since Yemen is lumped into the continent of Asia. There is a table of number of students by country of origin but only the top 15 countries are given.

Poking around some more, I found this data on Inbound International Students to China, 2011-2016 which shows that for 2016, the number of students from Yemen was 3,247 out of the total 442,389. That's less than 1% of the total but the increasing numbers from 2011 to 2016 for Yemen is quite interesting considering that the country's ongoing war is now into its sixth year. See my chart of the data below:

I found this study Leaving Home: Yemeni Students Discuss Study Abroad Migration whose author interviewed Yemeni students (all males) in Guangdong province of China about their decisions to leave Yemen to study abroad. The conclusion notes how "tribulations brought about by war and financial devastation have been catalysts for personal growth" for the participants and how they are "highly motivated toward economic success, and that this drive comes from older male family members in whom participants exhibit a great deal of pride and affection." I guess we can say the same for any group in similar circumstances but to me this highlights a fundamental difficulty in fighting for principles that require a level of detachment from personal, family or tribal ties. I see this especially as the author of the study continues to note the participants' detachment from the humanitarian toll going on in their country. But maybe, I, who considers herself a humanitarian, do the same. What really drives me to keep waiting for a visa to go work in Yemen? Or, as I started writing this post amidst the fear of a Covid-19 pandemic, how much attachment and detachment do we cultivate in our lives to truly be engaged, involved and caring about the issues of our times?

Yemen and Coffee

Eggers, Dave. Monk of Mokha. New York: Vintage Books, 2019.

I chose to buy this book because I was intrigued myself that the origins of coffee, this drink that I cannot start my day without, includes Yemen, of all places. I also thought it would be a good break from reading articles on the conflict and humanitarian situation in that country.

The first chapter of the book deftly hooks you into the story with a satchel filled with money and a new laptop only to get lost as fatigue caught up with the boundless energy of dreams for a bright future. It reminded me of how I felt sunk and very stupid, when I lost my new Surface 3 laptop, in circumstances carrying lesser dreams than what the protagonist found himself in but gut-wrenching nevertheless. And with that, I wanted to know how our hero, Mokhtar, overcome such a loss to become the founder of Port of Mokha, a company selling highly-rated coffee from Yemen.

The next chapters offer that joyful possibility that an individual, struck by a knowledge that makes him or her dream of big things, will open himself/herself to opportunities and key people along the way and somehow carve out a path, circuitous and perilous that may be, and make a dream a reality. Mokhtar wasn’t even a coffee drinker when he got excited upon learning that coffee had its origins in a Yemeni port called Mokha. Why did that discovery stirred and drove him to learn more and, against all odds, to bring Yemeni coffee to the U.S. and beyond?

We could look at the story from several angles but still the angle that I can understand is that of an immigrant whose identity was otherwise linked to war, conflict, terrorism, religious backwardness and poverty but who found something worth redeeming about his country of origin’s link to coffee. He embarked on an uncertain path whose twists and turns were guided by a network of family, friends, mentors, employers, colleagues and other people along his way.

There was money to be made but also a lot of money needed to get the dream become a reality. There were several points in the story when we worried that Mokhtar will not be able to get anything going because of lack of money to pay the coffee farmers, to build a mill, etc. But the guiding principle behind Mokhtar’s journey can best be summed up in a saying that his grandfather instilled in him, “Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart.” Or as fully stated from a quote from the medieval Islamic imam, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,

“When there is money in your hand and not in your heart, it will not harm you even if it is a lot; and when it is in your heart, it will harm you even if there is none in your hands.”

That's my big take anyway from the story. For a review of the book as one of Dave Egger's series of books on immigrants to America 'caught in the jaws of history', see the New York Times review.

Following the immigrant angle, I got curious how many Yemenis immigrated to the U.S. On the website of the Migration Policy Institute (which draws its data from the U.S. Census Bureau), I see that for the period 2014-2018, there were 51,800 - mostly in the states of Michigan, New York, California and Illinois. Interesting to note that almost 30% of that number is for Wayne County, Michigan where Detroit is the county seat. As to how these numbers compare to other countries of origin and other time periods, that's for another day of browsing the web.

Maputo's Street Names

[Note: I actually wrote this post while deployed in Mozambique from Sep to Dec 2016. I left it as a draft and did not really develop the blog as I wanted to. I've lost so many written notes on places I've visited so I decided today to work on this blog.]

In Maputo (at least in the area where I stayed), it is rare to find street signs at street corners, on poles, like in most cities I've visited. This has disoriented me during my first few days in Maputo when walking from A to B. I would have the street names and directions in my head from browsing Maputo on Google Maps but once I stepped out onto the streets, I got a bit lost as I tried to look for the street names on poles. I soon learned to look instead for plaques on concrete walls.

Beyond navigation though, the names of major avenues in Maputo remind me of the socialist and communist ideological inspirations for the revolutionary movement in Mozambique. To go downtown, I almost always walked down Av. Kim Il Sung or Av. Vladimir Lenine, both of which run into Av. Mao Tse Tung which is joined by Av. Salvador Allende. Further on, I could take Av. Karl Marx which runs into Av. Ho Chi Minh and if I walk towards the beach, I could stroll along Av. Friedrich Engels.

Beside these familiar names in history are street names in honor of men who played pioneering roles in the independence movements of other countries in Africa: Av. Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Av. Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Av. Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Av. Marien Ngouabi (Congo), Av. Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Amilcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Av. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana).

And, of course, Mozambique's own revolutionary heroes are also given tribute through streets named after them: Av. Eduardo Mondlane (FRELIMO's founder), Av. Samora Machel (1st President), Av. Josina Machel (Samora's first (?) wife but was also a key figure in the struggle for independence) , Av. Joaquim Chissano (2nd President),  Av. Emillia Dausse, Av. Tomas Nduda, Av. Armando Tivane and so on.

As if to set these intersecting names in historical time, a few major avenues in Maputo are named after important dates in the country's revolutionary history: Av. 25 de Setembro - the Mozambican war of independence officially started on Sep 25, 1964; Av. 24 de Julho - Mozambique's Independence Day; 16 de Junho - Massacre of Mueda; Av. 10 de Novembro (Maputo Day).