new blog!

hey folks, so i sort of let this trail off a bit as a traveled to turkey and the UK after leaving nepal, then, the very day i arrived back in the states, BAM. i got hired for a job in monrovia, liberia, where i arrived about a month ago, and i'll be living for the next two years.

thanks for reading, and i hope you'll subscribe to my new blog to follow me in monrovia.

elegies VI

maybe this one isn't so much an elegy, but it's self-indulgent, so let's roll with it.

i've been packing up all of my stuff recently, sorting out my own possessions from borrowed ones, practicing non-attachment as i wrench myself away from that old pair of torn black leggings that are practically indecent to wear. i came across a book that a friend loaned me a while back, a translation of mirza ghalib. among other things, ghalib was a master of the ghazal, a highly prescribed poetic form originating in the arab world and traveling to south asia in the 12th century.

for the first time in my life, i started going all insomniac this year. it's anti-fun. on the bright side, i got through an awful lot of books on tape. one night, after i finished reading some ghalib, i also got to toying with one phrase in my head, and decided to try writing a ghazal. it's, um, not easy.  from wikipedia:

Details of the form

• A ghazal is composed of five or more couplets.
• The second line of each couplet (or sher) in a ghazal usually ends with the repetition of a refrain of one or a few words, known as a radif, preceded by a rhyme known as the qaafiyaa. In Arabic, Persian and Turkic the couplet is termed a bayt and the line within the bayt is called a misra. In the first couplet, both lines end in the rhyme and refrain so that the ghazal's rhyme scheme is AA BA CA etc.
• Enjambment across lines or between couplets is not permitted in a strict ghazal; each couplet must be a complete sentence (or several sentences) in itself.
• All the couplets, and each line of each couplet, must share the same meter.
• Ghazal is simply the name of a form, and is not language-specific. Ghazals exist, for example, in Arabic, Bengali, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Malayalam, Punjabi, Kurdish and Pashtu and many other languages.
• In languages of Indian sub-continent ghazals occasionally contain no radif. Such ghazals are termed "ġair-muraddaf" ghazal. The pre-Islamic Arabian qasida was in monorhyme; like the rest of the qasida, the ghazal itself did not have a radif.
• Although every sher may be an independent poem in itself, the shers may share the same theme or even display continuity of thought. This is called a musalsal ghazal, or "continuous ghazal". The ghazal "chupke chupke raat din aasUU bahaanaa yaad hai" is a famous example of a musalsal ghazal.
• In modern Urdu poetry, there are a few ghazals which do not follow the restriction that the same beher must be used in both the lines of a sher. But even in these ghazals, qaafiyaa and, usually, radif are present.
• By placing his or her takhallus (pen name) in the maqta or final sher, the poet traditionally attempted to secure credit for his or her work. Poets often made elegant use of their takhallus in the maqta.

anyway, i just found it stuck in the ghalib book when i went to put it aside to return it. it's a work in progress (not that i'll ever finish it), but insofar as it's my blog and i'm doing the transitional emotional rollercoaster, i figure i can indulge myself and post a poem i wrote about nepal, on the theme of beginnings and ending. it's after the jump.

मेरो पहिलो आफै पाकेको खाना: my first self-cooked daal bhat

oh daal bhat...you, i'll miss the most.
but, fortunately, i can now cook you all on my very own.

daal bhat is about 50% of what you need to know about nepal. for all of the ethnic, linguistic, and culinary diversity in nepal, daal bhat is the common denominator, the staple meal for the vast majority of the population. it consists, at its most basic, of a MASSIVE mound of rice (bhat), and a watery legume soup (daal). standard additions are some kind of curried vegetable (tarkaari), sauteed greens (saag), one or two of an enormous variety of pickle or spicy sauce (achhar), and possibly meat and/or a little yogurt (dahi). it's eaten twice a day, mid-morning and early evening, served on a big metal plate, all in heaps and/or small metal bowls around the mound of rice. you eat it by pouring the dal on the rice bit by bit, and then MUSHING EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND EATING WITH YOUR HANDS, which is flippin' awesome. you're fully expected to have multiple portions of everything.

anyway, shockingly, i never cooked it for myself at any point in the last two years. firstly, i live in fear of pressure cookers. there's a reason they get used as improvised bombs. furthermore, it's pretty labor intensive (plan on two hours prep and cooking) and so ubiquitous that it really just makes more sense to pop down the street to literally any restaurant. i also have yet to find a good recipe online, so learning how to cook it would have required a lesson that i never seemed to get around to. but i recently bought my own copy of a taste of nepal, a cookbook i've gotten for several people as a present. the other night, both my roomie and i were CRAVING dal bhat, so we just went for it. we think it turned out pretty well for a first attempt, but by that point it was about 9pm, and we may have lost perspective in our starving state.

in any case, full recipes after the jump (hopefully i won't get a cease and desist letter from ms. patak).

missed (?) opportunities and musings on privilege

wowza have i been neglectful of this blog. mostly, i've been trying to stave off the panic of leaving nepal (in about three weeks!) with no job lined up-- both through sheer force of will, and the more practical measure of applying for lots and lots of jobs. i'm trying to remember, though, that i'm plenty young. even if i don't score a job that's both interesting to me and a more conventional/financially secure career move, i can go farm, and get some hands on experience to continue a career in food security and food systems, or i'll give this freelance journalism thing a shot.

i was thinking about the latter option when i saw that one of my favorite feminist blogs was having a short fiction contest where the only constraints were a 500-word limit and a female main character. i figured this was a perfect opportunity to a) get writing and b) get used to putting my writing out to be judged. i would work up a few pieces, ask some friends for comments, and submit the best. i had written one and started a second, when i went to check the deadline and saw that they had closed the contest early, due to overwhelming response. bummer

then i thought, wait a sec, the first piece was set in nepal. i already wrote the thing, and i can still practice getting used to putting it out there (admittedly to a much kinder audience)....

ANYWAY. it's after the jump. it's set sometime in the early 2000s in ktm, and it's (supposed to be) riffing on the theme of privilege. 

today in affirmation

i love blogger stats, especially when they tell me that someone has stumbled across this blog, repository of my inner thoughts and casual intellectual exercises, the venue through which i present to the world my experiences in nepal, by searching the term "new nepali sex blogs". so yeah. there's that.

recently spotted in my neighborhood

a nepali/korean restaurant that i pass on the way to work has just renamed itself: soul food garden restaurant.

"fabulous fab world" garment shop is getting a fresh coat of bright pink paint.

i saw a kid on the back of a motorbike wearing a tshirt that looked like it was for a death metal band. i am 98% sure that the name on the shirt was "MISHEGOSS".


god, am i going to miss this place.

initial thoughts on obl's death: d'tzach adash b'achav

i've been watching the responses to the death of bin laden with interest and, often, sadness.

let's be totally clear: i, too, rejoice at the death of bin laden. i don't care that he was killed, rather than caught and made to stand trial for his crimes. those crimes, both legal and moral, the promotion of hatemongering and extremism and terrible acts of murder and violence mean that his death is both a moral and strategic victory for all of us.

however, i think it's essential that our celebrations be dignified and leavened with a little solemnity. in pursuit of the necessary justice that bin laden's death brings, we should appreciate and remember the sacrifices of armed forces personnel pursuing him, and we should certainly remember the innocent lives of iraqi, afghani, and pakistani civilians that were lost, and those who have been displaced from their homes, possibly never to return.

last week, the jewish festival of passover concluded. during passover, jews recite the story of our liberation from enslavement in egypt, our departure and first steps towards the holy land. it is, as so many of our holidays are, a celebration of our survival. yet, in the heart of the seder, during the retelling of our triumph, we recite the ten plagues that god rained down upon the egyptians to effect our escape. at each plague's name, we remove a drop of wine with our fingertips from the one the four ritual cups of wine consumed at the seder, to signify that, while we rejoice, we feel sorrow for the suffering of our oppressors that was required to set us free. later, as the egyptians pursue the jews across the red sea, god drowns them. they sing a song of praise, and the angels start to join in. god reprimands them, saying, "the works of my hands [my children, the egyptians] are drowning, and you wish to sing praises?"*

but this isn't about religion, and it's certainly not about politics. it's about humanity. it's about acknowledging that triumph comes with a price. it's about rejecting simplistic narratives that would say otherwise, and lead us down a path that brings us dangerously close to disregarding and devaluing the lives of other humans, which is, after all, what separates us from people like bin laden in the first place.

*thanks to dan for posting this in his fb status, and getting me thinking.

elegies V

the poem from my last elegies post made me think of another one, one of my favorites. it's from a genre of palestinian exile poetry. i've only found this one translation online, aside from where i originally read it a few years ago, in a book for class on the israel-palestine conflict.

"The Traveler"
-Yusuf Abdul al-Aziz
  
He visits the station,
buys a ticket, and goes away.
He dreams of the unblinking sun,
of inns by the sea,
and the woman like a lily.
He drinks her kiss
in bed
near quiet window.
Always he had gathered his days
as the sea gathers its waves at twilight.
He watched them closely, then departed
for inscrutable destinations.
-Did you find the right departure date?
-No, I found the road that has severed the river
from its source.

"elegies" is a series of no-particular-format posts i'm writing as i begin the countdown to my departure in june, after nearly two years in kathmandu... mostly musings on life and lov and transition, what's gone before and what's coming next.

correlation o' the day

new from oktrends, 10 charts showing random significant correlations about sex, drawn from their user data base. the last one gives me an excuse to re-blog it!

it compares per capita GDP of a nation to the tendency of okcupid users in that nation to indicate that they are looking for casual sex. the fine folks there found that:

"...money seems to be a more powerful influence on sex drive than culture or even religion. You have, for example, Portugal, Oman, Slovenia, and Taiwan within a few pixels of each other on the right side of the graph, and Syria, Sri Lanka, and Guatemala almost stacked on the left, and all of them sit along the trend line."

you can click through the link above to toggle over the data points to see individual country data, but here's an image of the graph by region:

right. so i think this is an interesting jumping off point, if not a satisfying final conclusion. several things occur to me, and they mostly have to do with how we're defining our independent and dependent variables: prosperity an sexual proclivity.

Prosperity as independent variable measured by per capita GDP

1) Is per capita GDP here nominal or PPP-adjusted? is it what we should be using as a measure of prosperity? in my limited understanding, median income may be preferable, since it eliminates outliers in countries with large wealth gaps, where a few very folks may monopolize a lot of wealth (like the US!)

2) what other, more specific economic variables or variables associated with prosperity did the okT folks try? literacy? income inequality? family size? i wonder if any of these would produce a closer relationship...

3) what about non-economic variables? the okT folks also have access to data about strength of religious conviction which i suspect would correlate cross-nationally. there must be a way to compare this to other data sets about average religiosity in a given country. which brings us to the second set of issues...

"National" sexual proclivity as a dependent variable

...as measured by okCupid users in a given country, a self-selected population

and there we have the crux of the issue. okT doesn't try to obscure this fact, but i think it's something even more interesting to investigate, and something that quantitative analysis will only get you so far on [resists urge to climb atop methodologies soapbox].

basically, the most pressing issue here is that, for many of the countries shown, the dependent and independent variables are describing two significantly different populations. in a countries like the US or australia, with a high number of internet users and a (larger) social acceptance of internet dating, i think it's fair to say that those individuals willing to get on the internet and declare that they're looking for a random shag may be, if still self-selecting, to some degree representative of a larger population.

but think of other countries, especially developing world countries, where both populations, internet users and internet daters, are smaller. it seems to me, the self-selection bias gets much much stronger in those circumstances. now, this is surely still tied to some measure of economic prosperity, but i think it also implies that, in a lot of these places, we might be looking at a lot of different things: changing social trends and cultural mores, how early adopters of internet technologies are using the unique public/private space online to buck these mores, or again, push change. i small a comparative case study coming on!

anway, this is just off the top of m head this morning. what do other people think? 

i've asked the nice people at okT for their data, although i don't know if they can share it, so maybe we can test some of this stuff later.

 

elegies IV

it seems like every day now, something happens that brings home to me, with a stomach-churning pang, how much i will miss nepal.

i'm the unofficial additional roomie in the house across the road, popping over unannounced to charge my computer from their inverter, a luxury. fortunately, none of the various people who have lived here over the last year and half seem to have a problem with showing up home to find me sitting in their living room. c and i are there now, scrolling through my phone to send a mass text to gauge the social temperature for the night. probably only about a third of the numbers in my phone are people who are still here. i don't know why i haven't erased the outdated ones, and say as much to c, who has been here even longer than i.

"yeah," she says, "my phone's like a graveyard for old friends as well."
except they don't feel dead or gone to me, no matter how bad i've been about keeping in touch.

~

when my parents were here, my dad came along to our local bar to hear a friend's band play. it's one of the first places i ever went out in nepal, but a year a half later, it's like an extension of my living room, my personal nepali cheers. it is seedy, smoky, and dark, with layer upon layer of markered graffiti on the yellow walls; i am convinced i will never find any bar that i like as much, no matter where i go. a huge group of friends has gamely shown up to have a beer and chat to my dad. i, almost greedily, watch their faces and let their conversations wash around me. i am warmed by quiet pleasure. what remarkable, smart, funny people i know, and have known, here. my memory fills in the images of all of the people who aren't here now, who left a month or six months or a year ago, sitting around with us, as if they left yesterday. i wish i could introduce my parents to them, as well, but they'll have to rely on stories, unpaired with faces.

~

we've had a great afternoon, despite the rain. we grilled for my roomie's birthday, and people came in and out all afternoon and evening to eat and drink and talk. i took one last set of pictures of the birthday boy and a close friend of his, who was leaving to go back to australia, and later marveled at the open love on their faces as i scrolled through the photos. by this point, it's gotten dark, and i'm having a side conversation with another friend. he's in a long-distance, cross-cultural relationship, and it is understandably hard. i tell him, although i'm single, i think i know how he feels. i have been lucky enough to have many, many people i love, from college, from childhood, from nepal. they're scattered all over the world now, but i still feel connected to them. it is an exhausting blessing, i say. in my (rare) quiet moments, when i think about them, the connections soothe me, but i also feel as if i'm pouring love through those connections, beginning with me in kathmandu, end emptying in america, australia, spain, england, india, south africa. you sometimes wonder if the supply is unending, or if you'll get to the bottom of the well and wonder just what's left of you.

later that night, people are clearing out. one of my close friends comes over and squeezes me, hard. his cologne is familiar and overwhelming.

"if you don't keep in touch with me, i'm going to come find you," he says. "and take care of yourself. i won't be around to"

i'm surprised. he is a notoriously unsentimental person. it's one of the reasons we get along. "whatever," i say gruffly, "i'm leaving in two months, not tomorrow."

"maybe," he says, "but here, two months is tomorrow."

~

it's not just the people, i find. 

wrestling with my landlord's puppy; smelling the chicken roasting in the kebab shop on the corner; passing the rather startled looking woman's face painted on the sign for the "hair saloon" down the street; cheerfully arguing with cab drivers; making plans to get tea with the owner of the grocery store; the ease of buying veggies on my way home from work; clucking over the unseasonal rain, but seeing the mountain peaks emerge in the distance as the winter pollution is cleared from the air. 

all of these things and a million more overwhelm me with a sudden, dazzling, bewildering feeling of love on a daily basis. maybe it's that this is the first place i've lived for long enough, outside of the pre-existing structures of family or university, to feel like a home i've made for myself. it is, as much as my hometown or my college years, such a large part of who i am, partly because i'm so young. 

but this sense of love and homecoming i feel in kathmandu is inextricably tied to longing for the other homes i've had. while i sit and drink tea at the cafe, just in front of the ganesh statue, the sun hits me a certain way or some song comes on, and i'm suddenly yanked away. i'm tossing my deli-juice soaked apron off at the end of work and heading to the beach on the cape; i'm lying with friends in the courtyard of our residential college, our textbooks still closed as we stare up at the may blossoms against brown stone and iron of the gothic architecture.

the paradox of such simultaneous embededness and dislocation is dizzying.

~

before i left for nepal, i read a poem about kathmandu that a childhood friend's mother had given me. that's nice, i thought. the book stayed on my shelf when i moved here. 

she recently ran into my parents, a small town inevitability, and, learning that my time here was drawing to a close, sent me the poem again via email. this time i read it twice. once to myself, and once to my then roommate, who was leaving the next day for the states. after, we sat together on the porch, quietly, listening to the dogs bark, and, i imagine, feeling the levels in the well fall, and rise, and fall again.

~

SESTINA: HERE IN KATMANDU
Donald Justice (1925-2004)

We have climbed the mountain.
There's nothing more to do.
It is terrible to come down
To the valley
Where, amidst many flowers,
One thinks of snow,

As formerly, amidst snow,
Climbing the mountain,
One thought of flowers,
Tremulous, ruddy with dew,
In the valley.
One caught their scent coming down.

It is difficult to adjust, once down,
To the absense of snow.
Clear days, from the valley,
One looks up at the mountain.
What else is there to do?
Prayer wheels, flowers!

Let the flowers
Fade, the prayer wheels run down.
What have they to do
With us who have stood atop the snow
Atop the mountain,
Flags seen from the valley?

It might be possible to live in the valley,
To bury oneself among flowers,
If one could forget the mountain,
How, never once looking down,
Stiff, blinded with snow,
One knew what to do.

Meanwhile it is not easy here in Katmandu,
Especially when to the valley
That wind which means snow
Elsewhere, but here means flowers,
Comes down,
As soon it must, from the mountain.

"elegies" is a series of no-particular-format posts i'm writing as i begin the countdown to my departure in june, after nearly two years in kathmandu... mostly musings on life and love and transition, what's gone before and what's coming next.

i don't think it's possible to forget the mountain.
 
 

perspective: everything's amazing, but nobody's happy.

a gchat conversation between me and a friend who lived in nepal but went back to the states about four months ago...

her: ok, i'll let you go. let's skype sometime
me: yes, when i'm not sick, and at [cafe] writing grants on a saturday, hating life.
her: haha. ooh [cafe] <3
me: no, i hate [cafe] but i had the realization that it is literally the only place in kathmandu [within walking distance] that has consistent internet, electricity and toilet paper.
her: dude, it's so funny how much we focused on that there. but here in america, we have all those things, and it's like...still plenty of things to complain about.

re-watched this, and bracing for the culture shock...

blog pimpin'

two more excellent blogs from friends in nepal:

my friend ben has just finished facilitating the establishment of improved emergency medical services in nepal. he's also a sick dj. check out his descripton of the process here.

simon's a fulbrighter and a nice guy who writes about interesting stuff. check him out here.

kasto moto bhayo: changing body image ideals in developing countries?

i've been meaning to write this particular "wacky cultural gap" post since, literally, the first week i arrived here, but a recently released study makes the whole issue more interesting and pertinent again.

in the most recent issue of cultural anthropology, researchers from ASU  did a nine-site cross cultural survey of attitudes towards weight, and found that there is an overwhelming prevalence of "fat stigma," even in cultures, like american samoa, where attitudes as recently as ten years ago were traditionally considered "fat positive." the researchers credit this to the spread of western (and particularly american) influence and images. i'll leave aside an interrogation of the researchers' methods and findings (for instance: what socio-economic class did respondents belong to?) since the full article is gated [shakes fist at a cruel god], but it certainly seems disheartening.

anyone who's lived in a western country has a pretty robust understanding of "fat stigma". the connotation of the word fat is not limited to physical size, or even physical attractiveness, but has moral implications. if you are fat, you are lazy, undisciplined, stupid, and on and on (it goes without saying that i'm not a fan of this).

so it is understandably shocking to arrive in nepal and be told how fat, or moto, you are by as diverse a group of people as (off the top of my head, from like the last couple months): your coworkers, your cab driver, your landlords, the guy at the bakery, the lady at the tailor, and random folks you've just met. and just wait until a guy you've sort of been seeing suggests you buy men's jeans if you can't find a pair that fits. it's not just about weight, either. people will tell you look beautiful, or more commonly, sick, tired, or unhappy. frank commentary on appearance is par for the social course. but it is, of course, "fat," which strikes the most alarming chord with those of us raised in western cultures, especially the states. after all, we're the nation that spawned an entire genre of mortal insult predicated on impugning the honor of one's progenitor based on their BMI.

of course, we seasoned foreigner nepal-wallahs, cultural experts that we are, tell ourselves, chuckling uncertainly and sucking in our guts, "well of course that's not a bad thing here. in their culture, it means you're happy, or rich. really, it's very flattering. heh heh."

well, sort of.

it's true that, traditionally, the nepali word that translates literally to "fat", moto, had the connotation of being happy, healthy, wealthy, and attractive. dublo means thin, but also potentially sickly or weak. but my impression is that these categories are shifting, particularly among younger generations. it's unclear to what degree nepal fits into the ASU researchers' thesis. i would say that it basically does, if at one step removed. i agree, if the basic thesis is that economic power breeds cultural power breeds changing understandings and practice, either acquiescent or resistant to the hegemony*. as a nit-picky thing though, i would say that if nepal is becoming influenced by new "westernized" norms, it is via india, and in the case of body image, especially bollywood.

for instance, the first time i came in wearing nepali clothing, my coworkers complimented me on how nice i looked, with some degree of surprise, including a couple of peer-coworkers who had reacted skeptically to my inquiries about wearing kurta when i arrived, about six months earlier.

"but you didn't think i should get one before," i said.

"well, you just...you were shaped very differently then, much differently than nepali women," he hedged.

knowing the score by this point, as well as how much weight six months of chronic diarrhea and two field trips to remote nepal will inspire, i laughed. "pretty fat then, huh?"

"oh," he said, laughing with relief, "SO fat."

we chatted more about the nepali vs. western ideals of body image, and one agreed that the "traditional" understandings of "fat" and "thin" were more or less true.

"of course," he said, "the ladies prefer to be thin."


this is maybe a bit of a throw away post, but it serves as a  potential jumping off point for discussion about food security, nutrition, and public health in nepal (for instance, the growing diabetes epidmic). more importantly, it is implicated what i think are really interesting questions of "modernity," "tradition," and particularly trans-national flows of power in a country like nepal, which has seen exponential rates of social and political change in the last ten years, and shows no signs of slowing down.

*bonus: for a shockingly depoliticized and deliciously condescending view of both "traditional" and "changing" standards of beauty around the world, check out this oprah slide show.

29 march quicklinks

i'm too distracted for a theme right now, but you'll get a treat if you read all the way through to the end...

my friend suren is the lead singer of a pretty popular nepali rock outfit, karma band. he's in the states right now, and is performing it boston. check it out:

with that said, go because the concert should be fun, NOT to donate to japan. smarter, more experienced people than i have have already talked about why the rush to give to japan is a bad thing. in fact, the japanese government has restricted the donations it will take, so do your research if you want to give. while my parents were here, we were talking about what impact means, and i cited donations to japan as a major example of how donors need to stop getting what they think they want, and be educated about what is really needed.

~

seriously, if you like telenovelas, you'll LOVE hindi serials. emily does a break down of her new favorite, where bollywood gets on the sexy vampire bandwagon. and if that's not enough south asian cinematic goodness for you, check out the truly glorious awkward bollywood tumblr [h/t the ajnabee].

~

for those of us who can't get the basketball on tv (and have a robust nerdy streak), check out march madness for development economists and democrats vs. dictators.

~

a view from the cave has a good critique of the nyt coverage of voluntourism. he's basically said it, but still... it's amazing. it's like completely different people wrote the introduction, which has the most glancing, lip-service note on the critics of voluntourism, and the actual description of the trips. for instance...
intro:

"But the idea of “volunteer vacations” has been met with controversy: many not-for-profits say that the logistics of putting people on the ground disrupt the flow of care, and that fly-by-night foreigners are stealing long-term jobs from locals. These eight organizations are challenging that perception."

and, later:

"Project Brazil places volunteers in the Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro for 15 days to assist at a day care center with children 6 years and younger. Community Development in Peru sends volunteers to build efficient traditional cooking stoves and work in a women’s weaving co-op near Cuzco."

[does incredulous double take]

for more voluntourism discussion, check out my friend david's article, published in the latest SINHAS, on "The Anatomy of Ephemeral Healthcare: "Health Camps" and Short Term Medical Voluntourism in Remote Nepal" [update: forgot it's not available online. send me an email and i'll see if i can hook you up]. seriously, homeboy spent eight months in humla. he deserves a medal.

 ~

and in the latest from our corporate overlords...the US gvt bends over for GE, both the company and the crop varieties. i am not hopeful for the results of the wal-mart sex discrimination case, which gives the supreme court the chance to "keep up with the joneses", as it were, in terms of america's hottest two political trends of the year...whereby the only thing you can do more intensely than love corporate influence is hate women.

~

on the bright side, there's always delicious, delicious pop music. trust me, watch this video. it's brilliant, and not even in a rebecca black so bad it's good kind of way:

elegies III

i don't know whether it's coming from a house or a store, but there is one place on my walk home from work, just as i come up this little slope, past the intersection, where i am always engulfed in the smell of fresh ground cumin.

 

"elegies" is a series of no-particular-format posts i'm writing as i begin the countdown to my departure in june, after nearly two years in kathmandu... mostly musings on life and love and transition, what's gone before and what's coming next. i will never use pre-ground spices ever again.

coming soon to a computer near you...

parents visiting (yay) + being sick (boo) + work nuttiness (meh) = posting negligence.
BUT i'll be back later this week with all sorts of goodies, including: reflections on jim ferguson 20 years later, further elegies (SO EMO), a veritable orgy of quicklinks, and, a higher power (my boss and the fine folks at WFP) willing, an update on the research deal.

for now, though, big ups and happy spring to you all.

elegies II

i hadn't planned on, well, planning my next move, but a few things cropped up on my RSS feeds, and so i applied. now i have nightmares about interviews. it's overwhelming to consider the sheer number of possibilities (not to mention constraints), and to play out the the domino-effect that my choices now may have on my whole life path. i do find that this paralysis in the face of options is mitigated by my youth, relative to many of my other friends and fellow itinerants in kathmandu. one of these recently said:

"The other evening, I found myself once again wondering what it was that I was being called to do with my life and I decided that it was to walk in the light.

This afternoon I started this blog because I wanted to know what, exactly, we meant by that"

check it out.


"elegies" is a series of no-particular-format posts i'm writing as i begin the countdown to my departure in june, after nearly two years in kathmandu... mostly musings on life and love and transition, what's gone before and what's coming next. 

elegies I

i'm having a beer with my roommate and another friend on the front porch of my house. my parents are arriving in kathmandu the next day. i'm excited, if slightly anxious about justifying my last year and a half of life decisions to them. i describe to my friends (s. is nepali and j. is an aussie who's been here long enough to know the ropes) some of the ways i've tried to describe life in kathmandu to my parents.

"i tell them, it's like... in the states, if you were to, say,  accidentally step on a dead animal or get run off the sidewalk by a motorcycle bearing down on you from behind...that would be an extraordinarily bad day, like a need-to-go-debrief-with-a-friend-over-multiple-beers level of disruptive. here, it just...is. unpleasant perhaps, but nothing out of the question"

s. laughs and j. says, "well, i'm ok with all of it, except not having electricity when the [cricket] world cup is on." he holds his computer up, squinting at the screen as he tries to register a better wifi connection.

the power cuts out. without the light pollution, the stars are brighter than you would see in any urban area in the states. i hug my knees closer to my chest.  from late february through mid-april, kathmandu has dry and warm and bright, playing-hooky to lie in the sun kind of weather, but it is still gets a little chilly at night.

"mm yes. we do lead a charmed life," i say, taking a sip. i am very much serious.

"elegies" is a series of no-particular-format posts i'm writing as i begin the countdown to my departure in june, after nearly two years in kathmandu... mostly musings on life and love and transition, what's gone before and what's coming next.

17th march quicklinks

this week: scandal! mystery! but mostly... links that really grind my gears. featuring...

MISOGYNY!
...yet more victim-blaming in texas and elsewhere.
...so you think workplace discrimination is dead, and feminism obsolete?

POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY!
...yes, it's much easier to cut the $600 child tax credit than raise taxes on the top 1% of taxpayers who might make a campaign contribution, isn't it gov. snyder?
...i can't even think of something sassy, i'm so furious.

CORPORATE INTERESTS AND THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR HEALTH AND OUR EARTH!
...wait, you mean that your obvious cost-saving strategies in farmed meat production might have massive externalities that will be passed on to me? NO WAY.
...but, but... agrobiodiversity preservation and integrated smallholder farming systems aren't nearly so profitable!

INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS!
..."the Japanese have resources because they are rich, and it was their social solidarity that helped get them there". wait, say what there, easterly?

fortunately, i also discovered the good man project magazine, "a gathering place for thoughtful men with a conscience," which i suspect will be a soothing addition to my google reader.

through the google scholar rabbit hole...

...it gets odd. like foucault meets UFO kinda odd.

click to embiggen

11th march quicklinks: first, kill all the journalists

...not really. but many of the links i have from this past week have an element of critiquing the media to them, so i thought i'd pluck the low-hanging fruit, theme-wise.

totalitarian kitsch: i'm as guilty as anyone else of this particular offense. in light of the recent oppressive quashing of revolutions, the sometimes outrageously hypocritical responses to them, and the disheartening and infuriating revelations about US intellectuals' roles in the rehabilitation of dictators' images, can we afford not to re-examine the role that we, as media purveyors and consumers, have in downplaying the crimes of dictators by painting them as wacky but harmless, or even sort of adorable? the ajnabee has some thoughts.

~

from bitch media, a guide to getting past the terrible, sensationalist coverage that too often characterizes scientific reporting, particularly on gender, race, and culture. [h/t christine]

~

speaking of feminist media i enjoy, jezebel reported on the follow up to the DKE fraternity rape chant at yale, where they've done an admirable of committing to seriously looking at the university's culture and policies on sexual misconduct and misogyny. most of the post is the email sent from yale college dean mary miller, who deserves a LOT of credit for getting things rolling in a legitimate way. the fact that she was the master of my residential college (SAY WHAT? SAYBROOK!) and, briefly, my advisor, shouldn't invalidate it when i say that she is a feminist and general baller of the first order. i DO wish that the article had given more of a shout out to the yale women faculty forum, which submitted the original report with recommendations for reforming sexual misconduct policy at yale even before the DKE incident (full disclosure: i drafted it). but still. heady times.

~

neelika jayawardane offers a very cogent, and rightfully indignant criticism of a newsweek "guide for seize-the-day types" on where to travel before the next revolution hits. as if the general premise weren't in pretty poor taste, and the descriptions weren't rife with essentializing Orientalist crap, jayawardane points out that the authors don't even seem to have a very good sense of the political situations they're commenting on. the description of nepal's current status is sparse and sort of unobjectionable, except for the sort of weird, historical non-sequitor about china, which didn't actually border nepal until the annexation of tibet (with whom nepal HAD fought several previous wars), at which point CHINA chose to close the border. [h/t blattman]

~

and (one of) my internet crush(es), scott gilmore at PDT, has a serious gripe with selective coverage of kidnappings, and how that affects the safety of aid workers.

happy weekend!

where my nerds at?

a list of  color-related idioms in other languages...

...and from the warwick economics summit, a statistical analysis of why this man does not have a girlfriend:

Watch live streaming video from warwickeconomicssummit at livestream.com

life's little pleasures

as i was walking home from work yesterday, a small, colorful, slightly broke-ass truck covered in tarp passed me, bumping this song. and you know what? my life was a little better for it.

teach for...pakistan?

sorry! went all MIA. applications, filing what will hopefully be my first travel article, and a viciously tainted falafel (at what proved to be a really awesome wax tailor concert), have set me back a bit.

in the meantime! another south asia gig for those of you with some teaching experience (and possibly a death wish)....

Millions of children in Pakistan face the dual problem of educational inequity: limited access to schools and poor quality of schooling, and are thus denied access to educational opportunities that would enable them to improve their life prospects. Teach For Pakistan is a nationwide movement of outstanding graduates and young professionals who will commit two years to teach in under-resourced schools and go on to become life-long leaders working from all fields to expand educational opportunity. The Teach For Pakistan Fellowship is a two-year paid position during which Fellows are placed as full-time teachers in low income public and private schools in Karachi. The experience you will gain with us is compatible with the pursuit of a very broad range of personal and professional goals. Through this program you have the potential to transform the lives of hundreds of children and families, and shape the future of Pakistan. Join the Teach For Pakistan Fellowship to start the movement to end educational inequity. More information

more nepal jobs

ACDI/VOCA is "currently seeking a Deputy Chief of Party, a Grants Manager, and two Regional Program Managers for an anticipated USAID-funded, multiyear Partnerships for Local Development project in Nepal. This program will target six districts in the East and will focus on strengthening these communities to better direct their own local development through 1) stabilizing initiatives that facilitate enabling environments; 2) building capacity to identify and have access to resources to engage in participatory activities, 3) supporting new local government units in the targeted communities to function effectively. This position is contingent on ACDI/VOCA being awarded the program." more details after the jump.

nepal-related development gig

if you're job hunting, check out this new post for executive director of dZi foundation, a colorado-based community development organization that does some really great work in nepal. full job description after the jump.

awesome video day.

as if making up for the fact that i'm still writing a soul-burying USAID grant, teh internets (specifically jezebel) served me up two awesome videos to watch while i ate my lunch momo at my desk and tried to make sure our capacity building plan for local partners was adequately expressed in our impact logframe.

the first is actually pertinent to my last post on consciousness and reggae and hip-hop. two ten year old girls calling themselves watoto from the nile lay down the track "Letter to Lil Wayne".

"...a direct statement of justice from Watoto From The Nile. Growing tired and fed up with the constant degredation of Black women inside of Hip Hop music, they voice their views and opinions on this melodic track"

i already knew that old spice's BRILLIANT "the man your man could smell like" ad campaign was done without any CGI (except for the diamonds part in the first one, i think), but it was still really fun to watch this behind the scenes segment (additional brilliant marketing strategy) on the making of the new commercial.

 

the almost impossibly dreamy isaiah mustafa isn't the ONLY reason these are my favorite commercials of all time (except for maybe this), but let's just say i've never been so glad i learned how to do screen grabs.

desktop background, anyone?

"consciousness," commercialization, and the complex moral economy of reggae and hip-hop

*yeah, this has pretty much no connection to anything this blog is ostensibly about, but, meh..*

in "honor" of his recent cocaine trafficking conviction (and grammy award!), i've been enjoying a little buju banton in the office today. arguably one of dancehall and reggae's more influential voices in the last 25 years, i was still hesitant to post a link on my facebook page as unofficial song of the day (as is my wont), largely because of his horrifyingly violent homophobic streak, something that's incredibly common in a genre of music (well, reggae, more than dancehall), that styles itself as protest music, among artists who style themselves as champions of social justice, peace, and love.

at the same time, i realized i wouldn't hesitate to post songs from any number of hip-hop artists, despite the violence, misogyny and homophobia that is all too often a defining characteristic of the genre. ok, well then, is my discomfort greater with reggae because of the gap i perceive between the genre's stated mission and ethos, and its promotion of homophobia? if it is, it probably shouldn't be. just check out the lyrics of "conscious" hip-hop artists like tribe called quest, mos def, and common (rapwhitepeoplelike.com?), all of whom get significant play on my itunes.

how do we rationalize our engagement with (and enjoyment of) songs and artists that we find technically adept, musically compelling, and yet, at least in some circumstances, morally objectionable? one of my favorite answers to this is bryon hurt's documentary "beyond beats and rhymes",

"a riveting documentary that examines representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music through the lens of filmmaker Byron Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist. Conceived as a “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “hip-hop head,” Hurt examines issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture."

as part of his thesis, he talks about how these are part and parcel of a strategically constructed and commodified portrayal of modern american black masculinity within a genre which, nonetheless, began as legitimate protest (explicit and implicit) against a system of structural violence and oppression of every stripe.

this new york times article from 2004 touches on a couple of interesting issues presented by reggae and dancehall on major record labels (as they increasingly are). commercialization pulls in two directions, with inter-genre and roots reputations being staked on "underground" releases with violent themes intact (and often a sense of a neo-colonial censorship by major labels), and the money being made in mainstream venues in which those themes are no longer acceptable. this is not in any way to claim that record labels, concert promoters and sponsors have an monopoly on the moral high ground. it's just what the market demands. i would suspect that maybe reggae's biggest market, dreadlocked middle class white kids in the global north*,  don't like their "peace and love" package too contradictory or culturally complicated. on the other hand, hurt shows evidence that the commercialization of hip-hop on major labels resulted in the marketing of a certain black masculinity that the demographic with the largest purchasing power (white, suburban, male adolescents) wanted to consume: a violent, misogynist, homophobic hyper-masculinity.

anyway, nothing too coherent here, ultimately. just throwing out some monday afternoon thoughts, and wondering whether anyone has recommendations for articles and books that look at the history, commercialization, and controversies of reggae, the way hurt, bell hooks, jay smooth, and others have considered hip hop.

*yeah, yeah, i know. i don't exactly have citation for this one. whatevs. you live through three tourist seasons in kathmandu and tell me if you don't end up with a serious antipathy for balloon pants, blond dreadlocks, and bob marley cover bands.

well, hey there, you, with the published thing.

yeah, sure, it's only in electronic format, but i'm still pleased about a case study i submitted for my NGO, ‘Countries, Communities and Conservation: Building Cooperation in Kanchenjunga’, getting selected for publication in ICIMOD's forthcoming collection on mountain biodiversity initiatives.

huzzah.

(i also, like, as a friend pointed out, that the call is "especially for success stories")

if they don't have "walkin' in memphis" i'll do this one

sometimes even i can't believe this stuff is real.

click to embiggen

#cantmakethisshitup friday

do you want to see the world? well, if you're an "ice cream processing specialist", acdi/voca wants to send you to lebanon for three weeks. please note, successful candidates will have "knowledge on making sorbet". new favorite RSS feed, or new favorite RSS feed?

~

if you didn't think you could hate the Bieb any more, check this shit out:

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Justin Bieber said, "I really don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby?" Asked about cases of rape, he added, "Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason."

"i really don't believe you know what you're talking about, justin. it's like, let's talk when you hit puberty?"

~

on the formation of the new nepali cabinet:

Sources close to Khanal and Dahal said that though differences between the two coalition partners on some lucrative ministries remain unresolved, there has been an agreement to allot the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, Ministry of Law and Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation to the Maoist party.

 "LUCRATIVE"?? man, if there's one thing i like about the nepali government, at least they're open about their rent-seeking. real talk, right there. (update: oh, the maoist's are backing out, anyway. SHOCKING.)

 ~

i was wondering what had happened with this story. looks like pakistan's getting a little frisky with the definition of the term "diplomatic immunity".

links and apologies

massive grant writing shenanigans, planning my parents' mid-march visit, and the fact that the brief but heavy late winter/early spring rains are making their presence felt though my bedroom ceiling means that i've been a little busy, but here are some quick/fun links. awoohoo!

today, in "your new imaginary internet boyfriends", ta-nehisi coates is dreamy:

Every day women choose to do the hard labor of a difficult pregnancy. Its courageous work, which inspires in me a degree of admiration exceeded only by my horror at the notion of the state turning that courage, that hard labor, into a mandate. Women die performing that labor in smaller numbers as we advance, but they die all the same. Men do not. That is a privilege.

working at peace dividend trust would be so so cool, mostly because i would want scott gilmore as my boss. read these two rants about the down sides of volunteering overseas (notwithstanding his snarky crack about teachers in the second post). then read this post about hug-an-orphan tourism at good intentions are not enough.

the excitement over the upcoming bryan adams concert in ktm mounts. crowd control makes me a little nervous, despite reassurances from the authorities (or maybe, given that it's nepal, given the reassurances). also a friend and local musician, smriti bajacharya, is quoted here. yes, she is just as adorable as she sounds.

also in local news...wtf? either this guy is the nepali chuck norris (without, presumably, the unfortunate politics), or someone accidentally re-printed the synopsis of a bollywood movie.

and now a video that involves two of the things that give me the greatest joy: jay-z and cats doing weird shit. (and speaking of videos, if you voted for me for world traveler intern, thanks so much! if you haven't had the chance, i hope you can take a sec and "become a fan" of my video application)

nostalgia

damn if i don't miss piebald. spent the afternoon/evening re-discovering their timeless (well for me) album "we are the only friends that we have". one of the best things about this album is that it is an ALBUM, meant to be listened to as a whole, and not as byte-sized mp3 download singles. at the same time there's nothing wasted on this album, nothing that doesn't deserve a listen on its own terms. ahh the days of cds.

the first track, just to get you started...

feb 9th quicklinks

another linkdump! because they're fun... and i sense a theme coming on...
from oktrends, the okcupid stats analysis blog, and just in time for valentine's day, the best questions for a first date. using the user-generated match questions, they tell you how to find out things like your date's religious, political, and sexual attitudes by asking seemingly innocuous questions that correlate strongly to certain answers on the big, but potentially inappropriate questions. for instance, if you want to know if you're getting laid that night, ask your date if they like the taste of beer. if the answer is yes, you have a 60% better shot. also, points awarded for being probably the only stats website that gets away with this line: "in the post-apocalypse, THERE ARE NO SECOND DATES."

however, not all of us are so bound by social constraint (or, y'know, um, sensitive to social convention). things that i, for one, would be THRILLED to discuss on a first date (hey, hey, see what i did there?), include...

our all-time favorite criminally insane heads of state
dear charles taylor's lawyer: if i had made a habit of handing in term papers 20 days late, i would have failed out of college. if i submitted grants 20 days late, my NGO wouldn't be funded. i'd have to check, but i'm almost positive law schools aren't so hot on that shit either. so, what, exactly, did you think was going to happen here? love, molly

granted, when it comes to sheer bat-shittery, he's no muammar gaddafi or kim jong-il, but i think turkmenistan's kurbanguly berdymukhamedov is starting to show some real promise.

talk nerdy to me
seriously, let's order another round and bag on the quant hegemony in americanist political science. if you manage to pull out your own zombie-based parodies of major academic disciplines, you're probably getting lucky, but i'll settle for world-weary discussions of failures of knowledge in the afganistan war, or the perverse incentive system that structures the development industry.

why we love the obamas
 reason #48547259

terrible tv
don't get me wrong, i am a BIG fan of mediocre television programming, but i actually meant the absurdly offensive advertising campaigns that have cropped up recently, from the girl store to groupon to pepsi. because, i, for one, spent $160k on an education, the most striking effect of which is that i can't watch things like the superbowl or disney movies without getting frothy with indignation.


...but then again, there are reasons i'm still single.

...and speaking of self-promotion!
emily put up a nice post responding to my question about generationally different perceptions of agricultural labor in nepal and india.

also, if you voted for me in STA's world traveler internship, thanks so so much. if you haven't, it would be just swell if you took a second to check out my video. become a fan (the button's shoudl be to the right of my photo and bio, but some people have had problems) and/or leave a comment to help impress the fine folks at STA, and, if you like it, feel free to re-post, tweet, email it, or whatever social media the kids are dancing to these days. thanks bunches!

why the nepal gvt's secret deal is bad news.

it was revealed today that the maoist party's apparent 11th hour support for the new UML PM khanal was, in fact, the result of a nearly year-long  series of secret negotiations between one faction of the maoist party and the UML. it was the result of a seven-point agreement, with several very contentious arrangements. this is all, to employ a technical term, bad news bears.

one thing that probably won't be covered in the international press, but is really important, is the way this whole incident embodies the factionalism that pervades the three major parties: UCPN-maoist, CPN-UML (united marxist-leninist), and NC (nepali congress). infighting among factions is a major reason for the chronic ineffectiveness of nepal's democratic government(s) since the early 1990's, and one of the original rallying cries of the maoist insurgency. at the moment, there are probably three major factions of the maoists, and 2-3 in the UML, depending on who's counting.  the negotiation of the secret agreement by certain factions of each party can be seen as internal power plays by those factions, as well as a bid for control of government as a whole. this ktm post article gives a pretty good run down of the situation, although it's a little hard to follow if you're not familiar with the players.

the factionalism in play also makes this deal even more precarious than it already otherwise clearly is. as this other ktm post article describes, dahal and khanal have agreed to "clarify" the meaning of the seven points, under pressure from the opposition parties. they are ALSO under pressure from their respective parties to stand firm by the points as articulated (dahal's maoists) and to hedge their asses off (khanal's UML). the points needing clarification are the most contentious ones:

"The opposition to the accord mainly revolves around the fourth point, which commits to the formation of a separate force for Maoist combatants and the sixth point, which states that the UML and the Maoists will lead the government on a rotational basis."

the NC reaction to the whole thing, but particularly those two points, has been, predictably, something along the lines, of "bitch, please...".

it's only a matter of time until the whole thing falls apart. either

1) the UML-maoist coalition won't be able to reconcile their differences over implementation, and so won't form a government, and we end up back where we were, if not worse off, three weeks ago.

or, 2) they work out something that allows them to form a government, but wherein both parties save face...which will of course be so vague and full of loopholes that one party will eventually inevitably claim that the other party has failed to abide by the agreement. for instance: "on a rotational basis"? what does that even MEAN? the UML is saying it be only on the "basis of broad based consensus — contrary to the sixth provision that commits for “long-term cooperation between the two parties.”" they may work out something suitably agreeable, but when it comes time to hand over the reins, an excuse will be found not to do so. furthermore, even is the parties weren't so heavily factionalized, this seems logistically infeasible to me: a rotation over what length of time? do you form a new cabinet every time you switch over? (because that SURELY won't obstruct the duties of government or anything.)

or, 3) the agreement is somehow hammered out, clearly and unambiguously, through actual compromise, to the satisfaction of both the UML and the maoists. except now that they've gotten an even tentative and unstable agreement to the effect, i doubt the maoists would agree to anything other than the wholesale integration of the PLA as a separate force, and so point four will have to go in as is. this is totally antithetical to the absolute good of the professionalization of the security sector in peacebuilding, not to mention a COMPLETE spoiler when it comes to getting to constitution written. the NC and opposition parties will never ratify a statute under those circumstances.

and that's what's ultimately at stake here.

vote for meeeee

hey y'all,

i'm hoping you can take a second to watch a video and become a "fan" of my application for STA's 2011 world traveler internship.

interns tackle a 3-month itinerary drawn up by STA travel that includes 16 countries (a full around the world trip). they file blog entries, video and photos to document their trip.

if you feel comfortable re-posting, tweeting, emailing it out, or whatever other social media the kids are dancing to today, well, that would be just swell.

thanks bunches,
m

feb 7th quicklinks

i'm not really so much for "coherent thinking" today. it's just not that kind of monday for me. so here's a collection of random links that i've enjoyed in the past couple days.

alien tort statute jurisprudence continues to evolve. particularly liked this: 

"Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, part of the September panel that ruled for Shell, wrote that the original ruling "has no great practical effect except for the considerable benefit of avoiding abuse of the courts to extort settlements [from corporations]."

 oh, y'know, except for that whole accountability for the gross violation of human rights thing. have no doubt that this will go poorly if it ends up in the supreme court...well, "poorly" assuming you value human life and social and environmental justice, and you sort of resent the way that increasingly powerful international corporations crap all over the same for the sake of grotesque profit and even more so the way the roberts court actively helps them do it.

~

emily writes about the health and environmental impacts of quarrying in rural himachal pradesh. she notes that given the opportunity, people still express a preference for the polluting, unhealthy quarry work over traditional agriculture and husbandry, even if they could make the same amount of money. there's a possible additional factor that she didn't bring up in her speculation on the reasons for these preferences. in nepal, anyway, there seems to be a stigma associated with traditional agricultural and husbandry livelihoods among the younger generations. even when other factors might make agriculture a more viable option, it is viewed as undesirable and "backward" to continue the backbreaking labor of your parents' and grand-parents' generations. i wonder if this has an impact on what emily's seeing in india. regardless it's another example of the tension between progress and social and environmental welfare in developing countries, and the question of how much those members of the international community who benefited from the former without concern for the latter have the right to regulate it.

~

this is an old one from sociological images that i missed. it basically calls out avatar for being liberal guilt porn that should in no way be taken as a critical post-colonial narrative. i still haven't seen it, but i'm glad i can go into my next movie night with some pre-loaded righteous indignation.

~

oh my GOD do i miss good beer....

....almost as much as i miss electricity for 14 hours a day.

~

i didn't think it was possible for my crush on ted leo to get any bigger...but there ya go.

~

feb 14th: get in on flashmob kathmandu.

~

stars on NPR's tiny desk concerts: come for the unplugged version of "fixed" at 3:25; stay for the jokes about tote bags at the end.