Drink the Water

Massage as medicine

2011-04-17T02:49:00.000-07:00

Panda does not want any of it.

I went to see my neighborhood Chinese medicine doctor the other day after a bad run-in with some cockles (little bivalves that are currently very hard to come by in Singapore).

The doctor asked me a lot of questions, looked carefully at my tongue and eyes, held my wrist between his thumb and forefinger for a few minutes, and noted the yellow-green pallor of my skin. Diagnosis: I am not getting enough rest (true), under a lot of stress (sure), and my liver and lungs (and everything connected to them in the Chinese medicine sense) haven't had a chance to recover from the food poisoning because of all of the above plus the Cipro I tried initially. He prescribed bed before 11pm (livers apparently rest best between 11pm and 2am) and four herbal medicines in pill and potion form.

He gave my prescription to an elderly lady in a lab coat at the front of the clinic, and I watched as she pulled various roots and seeds from the tiny drawers lining the walls, ground them into powder, and threw them into a little terracotta pot to boil. While I was waiting for my concoction to brew, I wandered around the rest of the clinic and found myself suddenly in a room full of silent babies. They were getting massages.

Some sat upright and others lay on their backs, but one lay on his side like a tiny dictator--hand extended out for servicing by his attendant. The nurse masseuses carefully kneaded their backs, scratched their heads, and rubbed tiny circles into their palms. The babies drooled (more than usual) in ecstasy.

Baby massage seems awfully decadent, but I can say, four days of bitter herbal brew and my tummy is feeling much better.

A way to help this holiday season

2010-12-20T07:19:00.001-08:00

I wanted to share something I've been working on called the Lan Cun Education Project. It's a charitable fund to help kids in Lan Cun, a very poor, rural village in China, get a chance at an education.

Every dollar donated will go directly towards building, staffing, and supplying a cafeteria for the Lan Cun Primary School, which teaches kids ages five to eight. The school currently has no cafeteria, which means all the students have to leave school premises midday. With no place to go, many of them head home and can't come back for the second half of the school day. This is because the walk to and from school is not easy--some of these kids walk more than three hours a day over mountainous terrain. And of course, it is often the poorest kids who live farthest away. We plan to provide a safe space and a hot lunch for all the kids at the school for at least three years, after which time the school will be able to take over the hot lunch program.

This Project was thoroughly vetted by Give2Asia, a well-respected non-profit organization that supports public interest work in Asia, and is fully supported by the school's teachers and administration.

If you'd like to donate, you can click on the Donate button above or visit lancunproject.org. You can also mail a check to the address below.

WHY LAN CUN?
My dad was born in Lan Cun. He told us a lot of stories about what it was like to grow up there in the middle of mountains of southern China. The region was so isolated that his father, my grandfather, was the only teacher in the region. He taught school for a month or two in one village before moving on to the next. It often took him weeks to hike over the mountains, wade through flooded fields, and wait for raging rivers to subside, before he returned home to see and teach his own children. The route was unspeakably difficult, and he died on one of those journeys home. Today, Lan Cun doesn't rely on traveling teachers, it has its own school, but even so, getting an education remains a difficult path. The families in this village are "extremely poor" by World Bank standards, surviving on less than a dollar a day. Our Project seeks to help give the kids of Lan Cun a better chance at an education and ultimately a better life.

WHAT YOUR DONATION PAYS FOR
A donation of $20 pays for one child to have a hot lunch in the cafeteria for three years. If we reach our goal of $15,000, we will impact more than 800 kids and teachers by 2014. After that, the facilities and hot lunch program can be maintained with just a fraction of this amount by the school itself.

You can read more about the Project, including how we worked with the school for a year to develop this idea, our budget plan, how 100 percent of your donation will go to the kids, how we will oversee the results, and our sponsorship by Give2Asia, at lancunproject.org.

HOW TO DONATE
You can donate online at lancunproject.org, or you can also mail a check (please write Lan Cun Education Project on it) directly to this address:

Lan Cun Education Project
Give2Asia
465 California Street, 9th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104

Some suggested donation amounts:

$20 pays for one student to have a hot lunch in the new cafeteria for three years.
$160 covers the cost of lunch in the cafeteria for the students in each class who walk more than three hours a day through treacherous terrain to get between home and school.
$320 covers the students in each class who miss the second half of the school day.
$1000 covers the cost of an entire class, which thanks to you, can now spend less time getting to school and more time in it--learning.

At the mall

2010-12-01T06:29:00.001-08:00

I needed a SIM card, so I headed over to Mustafa Center, which I discovered is a 24-hour, multi-level warehouse store that rolls the thrill of shopping and the risk of dying in a stampede in one.

I pressed my way through shoes (1st), gold products (B1), and stuffed animals (B2) to the SIM card counter (way back of B2). Amit was standing there, and I showed him my phone, which I had bought in Rwanda and wasn't sure was in the same frequency zone as Singapore.

"Wanda?" he asked puzzled. I explained it was a country next to Sudan in Africa and watched as his eyes grew to the size of pingpong balls. "The place where many people are killed," he said. He shook his head, "A very bad country."

I paused to think about how to respond but not long enough because I blurted, "No, no! Every country has gone through a similar thing. Everywhere at some point, people have killed each other, even here in Singapore."

He did the thing I've noticed people do here when slightly embarrassed, which is to act as though the inappropriate thing that just happened, entirely didn't, the way maybe a crazy American grandmother might do. He told me I needed to get an adapter to plug in my phone and charge it before we could check the SIM card. I wove my way to House Appliances (front of B2), dug through bins for the adapter, waited in line behind a couple buying Jenga, a man buying AXE medicated lotion, and a teen buying a furry jacket with tiger stripes, and then headed back to Amit. He was stepping towards the direction of the exit. "Nine thirty, time for me to go home," he said. "Next guy comes at ten thirty. You wait for him if you need to call Wanda tonight."

PSA

2010-12-01T03:07:00.000-08:00

On TV, an adorable little girl drawing a picture of depressive-looking mother and little brother figures--sprinkling both with little blue circles to indicate abundant tears. With a grim expression, the little girl then draws three white lines on the paper. A very serious man voice says, "These are the reason her daddy is in jail. Don't smoke illegal cigarettes."

La la la

2010-11-30T20:05:00.000-08:00

A couple hours after I landed, I found myself in a meeting. At one point, there was a lively discussion and everyone started speaking in a quick, rhythmic language I'd never heard before. I started wondering whether there was a common language in Singapore that I wasn't aware of. It sounded to me a bit like Khmer mixed with Russian.

Later on, I found out it had been English. To be fair, I had been really tired. Also, there are little dialectic ticks in the English spoken here that throw me off. The word "la," for one, fills in for "um," "oh," "yes," "well," "really," and awkward pauses. I'm getting better, but a good deal of the time still, I'm not sure what the other person is saying. La.

Slots

2010-11-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

On the Singapore S-Pass (work visa) application, my choices for race are Caucasian, Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Other. For religion, they are Buddhist, Christian, Free Thinking, Hindu, Muslim, Taoist, and Other.

Americans in the mix

2010-06-03T15:41:00.001-07:00

Now, an American lawyer defending an opposition leader accused of genocidal ideology has been arrested. The Rwandan government says Peter Elrinder tried to escape the charges levied against him by swallowing a bunch of pills while in jail. Something doesn't feel right.

Erlinder often defends extremely controversial individuals. He is used to doing that, however, in places where Western principles of rule of law prevail.

Why this matters

2010-05-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Mark Twain

Orderly and oppressive

2010-04-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

As Americans, we tend to assume that democracy is the best option. Human rights groups are jumping on the Rwandan government for achieving order through oppression.

Rwanda offers ample evidence that democracy requires ripeness in the form of at least a baseline of education, common values, and economic stability.

Perhaps it's too early in Rwanda's reconstruction to call for democracy. This is a nation carved out and then divided by outside forces. It was the Belgian government that arbitrarily determined who was in the majority (Hutu: fewer than ten cows, dark skinned, medium height) and the minority (Tutsi: more than ten cows, lighter skinned, tall). The situation is imperfect, and people are suffering, but now again is not the time for outsiders to press for their way of doing things.

Shades of gray

2010-04-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

An update to the civil unrest that appeared to be brewing in Rwanda when I last left off: Last week, the government arrested an opposition politician for alleged genocide ideology. The many arrests of Hutu leadership so far signals a clear distrust of allowing the majority back into power.

Is there a point when the suppression of differing ideologies shifts from actions necessary to maintain the peace to actions necessary to maintain power? I'm not sure the answer really matters when we're talking about ideologies differing in terms of "genocide good" versus "genocide bad." But it certainly is not the case that being Hutu translates automatically to one or the other.

There is such thing too as a slow genocide--where silently and slowly, right before our eyes, an entire group of people is stepped on until they are ground into dust.

A way to help

2010-03-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've gotten some questions about how to support WE-ACTx and the other organizations that I had the chance to work with on this trip.

WE-ACTx is about to throw two major fundraisers, one in San Francisco and the other in Boston. You can attend either event or donate online. Authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman will host the San Francisco event, and there will be lots of pretty bags made by the women at Ineza for sale, so it should be neat.

Another great organization to give to and that I worked with is CHABHA, which leads a number of associations that work directly with kids in need. One of these associations is Amahoro, which means "peace" in Kinyarwanda, and is managed by an enthusiastic group of young people who were orphaned by HIV/AIDS and themselves beneficiaries. They took me along for a visit to a tiny village called Bumgogo where four hundred children greeted us with songs and a dance before our presentation on legal rights. Many of the kids walk for hours to be there for Amahoro's weekly visit to play games, learn about everything from HIV to nutrition, and talk about their problems. Like many of the aid organizations in Rwanda, Amahoro is billed as a religious organization but in fact provides aid freely and without regard to class, clan, or religion.
In the Bumgogo schoolhouse, another example of Amahoro's thoughtful aid work. These rabbits now belong to some of the poorest families in the village. In some circles in Rwanda, owning livestock (in whatever form) is critical to social standing and acceptance.

Newsworthy rumors

2010-03-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

The national and international media have not covered the most recent grenade attacks in the Southern and Eastern provinces of Rwanda. The justification seems to be, because acts of terrorism occur frequently along the borders of Rwanda, they aren't actually newsworthy. And so, these events (as well as some closer to Kigali) officially remain rumors.

What the media is failing to address is the fact that tensions here are high--some say as high as they were before the country imploded in 1994. While the seven grenade attacks that killed or wounded 47 people in the capital city of Kigali on February 19 and March 4 caught most of the media's attention, a number of other events reveal the mounting tensions here. On February 25, President Sarkozy was the first French leader to visit since 1994, ostensibly to open up relations between France and Rwanda, by apologizing (lamely), for France's starring role in supporting the genocide. Less known is that Sarkozy's visit was also to negotiate a horse trade, President Habyarimana's widow (a woman many know to many as "Lady Genocide"), whom the French have protected since Habyarimana's plane was shot down leading into the worst 100 days of the genocide, in exchange for the safety of the exiled former Rwandan Ambassador to India, who was until recently a respected member of the ruling party. The Ambassador is a former general who is said to have been organizing a split away from President Kagame's regime (read: coup) and is now seeking asylum in South Africa. The next presidential election is in September.

Fracturing within Kagame's RPF is the proverbial hole in the dike--the start of instability in a country that above all needs stability. Kagame's rule may be imperfect, but of the many things it has achieved is making Rwanda one of the safest countries in Eastern Africa in record time. Since the end of its civil war, Rwanda has become the haven to which refugees from the DRC, Uganda, and Burundi have run.

After the first grenade attacks in Kigali, President Kagame attempted to quell fears by assuring on national television that the country is safe. But the announcement seemed only to motivate the opposition party(ies) to prove him wrong. Alarmed by the threat of multiple mass attacks around the country, the government announced on March 7, that March 8 would be a "holiday." In the guise of celebrating International Women's Day, all businesses were closed (read: no one was to be on the streets). Since the forced holiday, the streets have remained noticeably more quiet during the day and almost empty by nightfall. While the UN and U.S. Embassy here have been publicly silent on the situation, internally, staff have been warned to avoid large public gatherings (markets, main thoroughfares), all public transportation, and going out after dark.

To make matters worse, April 6 marks the start of the annual 100 days of mourning throughout the country. Every year in anticipation of this time, medical clinics see a rise in cases of severe depression and PTSD, including flashbacks and severe withdrawal (patients often fail to make the connection between their mental and physical health, coming in with "stomach aches"). The bomb threats, threats of a coup, and now rumored snatching of young men off the streets to be forcibly recruited into various military factions, are reminding everyone of what happened the last time.

Living here and working with many Rwandans, however briefly, my view of the situation is of extreme concern. While I will have the luxury of leaving Rwanda later today, my colleagues and friends here do not. It is critically important for the international community to acknowledge the growing violence here. It is not an overstatement that Rwanda is again on the brink of implosion. As human beings, we owe Rwanda so much, but at the very least, we owe them the help we failed to provide the last time around.

Evil

2010-03-12T02:17:00.000-08:00

The fraudulent invitation.

A dedicated member of the WE-ACTx team, a Rwandan who was inspired to work with orphans because he is one himself, showed me an email invitation he had just received to attend a conference of NGO leaders working on AIDS and environmental issues.

The invitation promised an opportunity to travel for free to Los Angeles to meet for a week with others fighting for the cause--all for just a registration fee of $275. He was concerned it was too good to be true. It hadn't even occurred to me that such a thing could be fraudulent. Unfortunately, he was right.

The alleged organizer, the Edith Travis AIDS Foundation, lists a phony contact address on its shady website and hasn't answered my emails requesting more information about their program. They just want me to pay the registration fee.

What kind of people would prey on those who work in Rwanda and other developing countries for HIV/AIDS, environmental, and human rights causes? The people at our organization work tirelessly to ensure access to medical care for more than 6000 women and children with HIV. They persuade guardians, who believe that a child with HIV has no future and therefore can be treated like a slave, to change their ways. They scrape together money to keep children in school who could not otherwise pay the (illegally levied) fees. They counsel women and children who have been traumatized by sexual violence. They act as parents to several hundred children who have been orphaned by AIDS. They provide meals to children and families who otherwise would eat just a few times a week. They manage income generation projects that teach business skills to women who are otherwise unemployable because of their mental health. They mediate property disputes among adults who are supposed to be using the property for the benefit of the children in their care. They do this on a shoestring organizational budget, sometimes supplemented with their own modest to meager personal funds.

If you would like to offer some choice words to the immoral con-artists known as the Edith Travis AIDS Foundation, contact them at etaf-africa@africamail.com.

The child said,

2010-03-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

"Lawyers are people who care about the problems of others."

Where the ingagi are

2010-03-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

Rwanda may be small, but it has an uncomfortably concentrated population density of about 340 people per square kilometer. Fertile land is scarce, and so the land is tilled to within one millimeter of the protected peaks of the volcanoes in Virunga National Park.

The last 700 mountain gorillas in the world live within these islands of wilderness. They do not survive in captivity.

Tracking ingagi (gorillas!)

2010-03-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

Igisura and Intovu: Poison and antidote

I had a little bit of time to step back from the project and take in some of the country, and so we decided to see about the mountain gorillas in the north along the Rwanda-DRC-Uganda border in Virunga National Park.

Of the many things that the guidebooks don't tell you about tracking gorillas are the stinging nettles covering every inch of the landscape. Igisura, as they are called in Kinyarwanda, grow up to 10 feet high but can also creep along the ground. In any of its varieties, a brush of bare skin against a leaf or stem causes an immediate burning and itching sensation that slowly devolves into a dull throbbing reminiscent of chronic arthritis (I'm told) that will disappear after about 24 hours.

After I grabbed a stalk trying to steady myself in knee-deep mud, our intrepid guide Felix, who has spent more than 20 years habituating gorillas and golden monkeys all over the Great Lakes region, picked a leaf from the intovu plant and showed me how to rub the white milk seeping out onto my skin. I felt immediate and complete relief, and wondered, when we finally saw the gorilla babies covered in stinging nettle burrs, whether their playful rolling around on and stomping of certain grasses belied their own knowledge of medicinal plants.

She's got some burrs in her furs.

Ideals

2010-03-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

Today we spoke to a couple hundred orphaned and/or HIV positive children about how to use the law to protect themselves.

So many parts of children's lives do not match up with what the Constitution, UN Convention, or other laws provide. When we asked why knowing your rights is important, a young boy answered, "Knowing our rights is important, because they show us where we can go."

Some edible (packaged) Rwandan things

2010-03-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Pilipili sauce, a pure hot pepper oil, the point of which seems to be to cause physical pain without actually adding flavor (left). Inyange brand passionfruit juice, very tasty, with just a touch of Sodium Benzoate for kick (right).

And so on

2010-03-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

As people here try to read into recents events to try to predict whether all of this is the start of another ethnic/socioeconomic civil war or just the start of an election season, life goes on.

A typographer was painting this Coca-Cola ad freehand in the middle of downtown. Being into type design and all things print, I was really excited to see someone practicing this mostly dying art form. He was surprised that I was so interested, and I was sorry to disappoint him with the news that very few signs are still painted like this in the United States.

Then we noticed the slogan, "No power sharing," on the back of his coveralls and were thrown back into thinking about Rwandan politics. We mistook it for an inflammatory statement about the power struggle between the Hutu and Tutsi. We were only slightly relieved when the typographer explained it referred to the tumult that was Kenyan politics in 2008, a period that involved a rigged election, international meddling, and many dead protestors.

Memoriam

2010-03-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

We visited the Gisozi Genocide Memorial where more than 250,000 people are buried in mass graves.

A mass grave lies beneath this concrete slab.

We were hesitant to go since one of the grenades last night was detonated right outside. But it seemed important to visit in defiance of these most recent acts of terrorism. That people would attempt to restart the chaos and horror of Rwanda's past in this very place, demonstrates how humanity's fleeting memory is our great weakness.

In honor of the upcoming election

2010-03-04T13:03:00.001-08:00

Two more grenade attacks just reported. I am starting to notice without much comfort that many articles on the subject make sure to mention, Kigali is among the safest capital cities in the world. I don't remember the conditional "capital" there before. No new travel advisories resulting so far.

From the U.S. State Department Warden Message:

The U.S. Embassy in Kigali confirms there were two grenade attacks in Kigali at approximately 8:00 p.m. local time. The first occurred in the Kimironko neighborhood near the Printemps Hotel. The second was in the Kinamba neighborhood near the Gisozi Genocide Memorial. Injuries and/or casualties are unknown at this time.

Past and present

2010-03-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

It's easy to notice people convicted of genocide crimes, because they are dressed in bright pink. The irony of prison garb the color of rose petals, soap, and princess dresses is probably not lost on the prisoners.

On the way to the National University of Rwanda Law School in Huye (formerly Butare), we saw such a crew building a new genocide memorial. Memorials generally are placed on sites of significance to the nearby residents, and so often mark where mass murders of entire communities took place. I wonder if to those who carried out the genocide, marking the sites of their crimes bears much meaning. Worse, could participating in building permanent memorials of those acts nurture a perverse sense of pride? I haven't found any studies on this question. At the law school, we saw the incredible work of their Legal Aid Clinic, which runs every Thursday afternoon. The small group of law students offering free guidance to the most vulnerable members of the community was a starkly different act from that foisted on the prisoners. It was one of building a future rather than simply building upon the past.

Fellow passengers

2010-03-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

We had to get from the Remera office to the Centreville office, so we took the city bus. They are essentially the size of the sort of Volkswaagen vans that a band of five would use to roam the United States, but instead somehow crammed with five rows of four and two seats with additional fold-down seats in the aisle. Since these aisle seats are always taken, no one has legroom and everyone in the aisle must stand up and fold their seat at each stop.

Today it was raining as we passed Parliament, a stark building riddled with mortar shells perched on top of a hill overlooking the city. As I sat glumly in my aisle seat, I felt two eyes peering at me. They belonged to a little kid in a white polo shirt and pressed khakis, who was trying to summon courage to say something to me. I broke the ice and said hello. Carefully, he started talking. "Hello. My name is Eric. I am nine. What is your name? What is your address and phone number?" His English vocabulary beyond this script was a little sparse, but he did manage to tell me he was on his way to sing a song on a radio show and that he practiced singing on Mondays and Tuesdays. He proudly pointed out the huge building where the station was, and continued trying out new phrases as we approached. When we reached his stop, I wished him luck and gave him a high-five, which made him smile broadly. As he jumped out of the bus, he cheerfully greeted an elderly gentleman in line, and then hopped down the street to his appointment.

Everyone on the bus began murmuring. My colleague J, a Rwandan attorney, translated. They had been struck by what a charming little kid Eric was. My colleague and I considered how great the world could be if we could all truly communicate with each other, despite our distinct languages. This led to him teaching me how to count in Kinyarwanda. I realized somewhere around "five" that everyone on the little bus was listening to the lesson. They would murmur approval when I got close to a decent pronunciation. Not wanting to let the good will slip away without offering something in return, I asked if anyone wanted to learn Chinese. They were all very excited about this, and so I taught them how to count from one to five in Mandarin and how to say, "thank you." "Ni byiza," some said in Kinyarwanda. "Tres bien," others said in French. When the bus emptied downtown, we said goodbye to one other in all our respective languages.

One Rimwe Yi Un

Two Kabiri Er Deux
Three Gatatu San Trois
Four Kane Si Quatre
Five Gatanu Wu Cinq
Thanks Murakoze Xie Xie Merci
Goodbye Murabeho Zai Jian Au revoir

Blue sky and bullet-riddled Parliament

2010-03-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

Stealing souls

2010-03-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Until two years ago, Rwanda was officially Francophone--the enfranchised spoke both Kinyarwanda and French. Then President Kagame declared (after recognizing the economic advantages, not to mention some political upheaval) that Rwanda would be Anglophone. Of course, the transition could not be immediate. Given my limited French, in meetings with NGOs and aid organizations, I've relied at times on an interpreter.

Over Fantas and biscuits during a break, my interpreter F and I got into a discussion about decorum in our respective countries. I asked about, among other things, the protocol for introductions (shake hands, say "Mister" or "Ms.," the usual, as it turns out). Then, earnestly, he asked, "In the U.S., do people just take pictures of each other without asking?"

"Well, no," I said, embarassed. "We tourists just tend to forget that people are not just part of the landscape."

When traveling, I try hard to ask for permission when taking pictures of human beings, but, of course, it's impossible to get a candid photo of daily life unless you take a--well, candid shot. In Tibet, the locals have the photo racket down, refusing to stay still as tourists try to take pictures but immediately assuming a stock pose once paid. If that's my option, I'd rather just buy a postcard.

I spent the day taking pictures of the amazingly lush flora all around Kigali.

In the minority

2010-02-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

The sidewalk of a non-litigious society.

I stand out in Rwanda, though not as much as I'd thought. There is a lot of development happening over here, and it's mainly being funded by Chinese companies. New beautifully paved roads are popping up overnight, and the miles of sidewalks accompanying them are built of meticulously laid, patterned bricks. It's not a surprise then that much of the new construction reminds me of what you find in parts of Guangzhou. The similarities extend all the way down to the widespread use of papaya trees and purple-leaved succulents in the landscaping.

Unlike in other parts of the world, the terms of the foreign development contracts keep the majority of the profits in Rwanda, while requiring a high reliance on local labor. These are concessions American and European companies were not willing to make, and so China is really getting a strong foothold. So far, the relationship appears to be going well, as I am greeted very warmly by everyone. No one really gets that I'm an American.

Still, there are far fewer Asian people than traditional muzungu here on the streets. While I am interesting enough to gawk at, I am apparently still not as captivating as people of European descent. A white colleague told the story of being packed next to a woman and her friend on one of the crowded, public minibuses. The woman rather boldly stroked my colleague's hand a few times before telling her friend, "I wanted to touch one before I died." "What does it feel like?" the friend asked. "Like a ripe banana," the woman said.

And now, to Rwanda

2010-02-23T22:33:00.000-08:00

I am going to Rwanda. This upcoming trip came about through my work with an organization everyone ought to know about--Women's Equity in Access to Care & Treatment, or WE-ACTx for short.

It's an unwieldy name for an organization that manages to run an unwieldy number of incredible projects that aim to improve the lives of women and children in Rwanda. There are income generation collectives employing women who are disabled, physically and mentally, and are otherwise unemployable. Clinics staffed with physicians who provide critically needed health care. Yogis that run programs for the patients. And attorneys who counsel, advocate, and educate on the behalf of otherwise voiceless souls. This is where I come in.

We've been writing a book on children's legal rights that's now in its final phases. Rather than creating a theoretical book for academics and policy wonks destined to die as a doorstop, we tried to take a different tack and write the book for children. So, it starts with the story of a little frog who loses her mother and learns about her rights under the law to her father's support. More substantive sections on topics such as inheritance rights, filing for assistance for school fees, and reporting abuse follow.

The question is, how do you make something like a book useful in circumstances like these? In Rwanda, children without a mother and father make up nearly 9 percent of the total population. That's nearly 900,000 children cooking for themselves, working, learning how to pay for health care, fighting neighbors for the right to live in the house their parents left for them, and telling stories about their mother to siblings before turning out the light. Child-headed households in rural areas face bleaker prospects still. How do you explain all the things that their parents were supposed to have been able to teach? How do you urge them to recognize rights that exist only on paper? How much is fair to ask of a nation that was only just reborn? I keep reminding myself, if this book offers comfort to someone who picks it up, that would be something. It would be something where there had been nothing.

Six hundred years in one hour

2009-09-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

The rules for visiting Potala Gong, the palace of the Dalai Lama, are the same as when boarding an airplane. Everyone must have a ticket. Everyone must be on time. No smoking. No liquids. No knives.

The rules are strict, at least in part, because for some decades the palace was sinking. The stone and mud construction could not bear the crush of all the people who came to see it, including the religious pilgrims who arrive each day and don't need a ticket. Billions of yuan in renovations later, and the palace looks to be stabilized. Still, the number of foreign visitors is capped each day, and everyone gets just one hour to pack in all the sights.

There were breathtaking frescoes; towering, jewel-encrusted tombs of former lamas; stacks upon stacks of gilded, sacred texts prescribing everything from what to read to when to ride on an airplane; and surprisingly intricate tapestries of woven yak hair. Still, something else really struck me.

The floors. The floors are a shiny, pinkish marble. The tops of the walls are made of this too. The material is actually a composite of sand, dirt, and oil called agha. The wet mixture is poured in place, smoothed by hand, and then pounded flat with wooden bats until it gleams. When done right, the process takes about two weeks of pounding to create a water-tight surface. So, the construction of agha is itself a Buddhist lesson, requiring patience until blisters become callouses. The tapping echoed all over the palace grounds.

Heap of white rice

2009-08-26T23:46:00.000-07:00

Tibet Day 3

The Drepung Monastery's buildings are painted white and stacked up on the hillside such that they resemble a pile of white rice. The words "dre" and "pung" mean "rice" and "heap."

Along the route up to the main hall, we passed an eternal prayer wheel, which mesmerized me for a long while...

until a ram that had been released as a prayer offering ambled by.

Spotted on the street in Lhasa

2009-08-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

For every handmade broom in the corner store, five canisters of Kraft Parmesan Cheese are never made. That's why I buy Kraft brand Parmesan brooms. Between a resourcefully made broom and a waxy, cheese-flavored, food product, it's no contest as to which I'd rather eat.

Tips for high places

2009-08-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

Tibet Day 2

We have done very little in Lhasa except for sleep and sit around in the past 48 hours. I'm learning what helps to feel more comfortable at 12,000 feet (and a third less oxygen than at sea level):

1. Don't take a shower (at first). It will only make you sick. Anyway, sweat just disappears into thin air here.
2. Sprinkle water on the floor to counter the arid climate of the steppe. As I mentioned, sweat just disappears into thin air here. My bedside glass of water evaporated a third overnight!
3. Rest. For me, this has meant switching the TV between CCTV 7 and 9 for the sitcoms and travel shows. I am also fascinated by a western Chinese show about antiques. So far today, in between showing off their mediocre dancing and singing talents, the panel of experts discussed a bronze bowl, a jade charm shaped like a twig, and a terracotta camel.
4. Take your Diamox. Or chew your local, high-mountain plant.
5. Make yourself eat even though at high altitude food feels deceivingly pointless. Tonight over a dinner of white radish soup and sauteed yak (more on that later), we met fellow travelers including the manager of a Michelin tire plant. See, that is what you are missing when you don't eat.

Now, if only I hadn't come here already sick. I woke up several times in the night feeling like I just couldn't get enough air. I took a few, very deep breaths as if I were in yoga class and felt a little better. The locals here are flip about complaints other than about headaches, which must be in their experience, precursors to dying, or at least voluminous puking. No headaches for me.

My travel mates are all related to me and so far stumbling down this road of discomfort at mostly the same pace. I am curious to know whether most everyone goes through this rough period, or just those who share my genes?

Altitude and colds don't mix

2009-08-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

The only thing rarer than oxygen and hamburgers in the TAR is Internet access, so apologies for these necessarily post-facto posts.

Tibet Day 1
From the instant you step off the plane onto the gangplank, it's clear something is not quite right with your lungs or your head. You notice you're taking two breaths for every step, and everyone seems to be moving faster than you. A guy on the plane who has been traveling in and out of the TAR for the past year offers this wisdom: Say little, move slowly, expect to feel uncomfortable in the middle of the night. Most importantly, don't panic.

We meet our guide who welcomes us with hada, long white scarves that he says, I'm not supposed to step on. I step on it three times as I stumble to the van with my backpack, which suddenly feels ridicuously oversized and overstuffed. I realize I should not have packed a copy of Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet Magazine along with my collection of Chinese and Tibetan language books. I also suddenly realize all I want to do is sleep. The only thing I notice on the way to the hotel is the ring of enormous, charcoal gray mountains encircling us. They are so sharp they are like the jagged teeth of a giant, charred beast. We enter a tunnel that cuts through one of the largest peaks, and we don't see daylight for a full five minutes. On the other side, the mountains are not gray, but bright white, red or green. All along their bases, countless people have painted criss-crossing forms, white lines that look like ladders. They are prayers climbing up to the bluest sky I have ever seen.

Last day at sea level

2009-08-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

Back in Shanghai one last night before we leave for the TAR. My cough has not gone away, and so I have taken my impending altitude sickness as cause for one last feast. I won't have much of an appetite when it hits and all. We went to a Hong Kong chain called, Yi Ge Huoguo, 一哥火鍋, or Number One Hotpot, and ordered all-you-can-eat and ate all of this and more.

Note the delicious and still undulating abalone on the white plate in front. If not overcooked, abalone is one of my favorite things. It tastes somewhat like a silky, soft clam without the seaweed aftertaste. Clearly, the taste is very unique. In terms of phylogeny, abalone are snails with a shallow shell, which doesn't bother me, but then again, I eat most everything. I especially like eating, in my sister's words, "foods that feel like clam."

Nanjing in a day

2009-08-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

The ruins of the imperial palace, the Ming Gugong, 明故宮, which was the model for the much newer imperial palace in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
As was the fashion with palaces in those days, it was protected by a huge wall and a moat. Sun Yatsen was laid to rest in his fancy mausoleum, 中山陵, in 1929. He asked everyone to keep it simple, but the nice thing about dead people is that you don't have to listen to them.In China, black corn tastes better than yellow corn, but everyone knows there's no better corn than Ohio corn. Everyone who knows what Ohio is, that is.A very tiny child wielding a very long sword.
Beipei was the youngest son of the dragon, and he ended up looking like a turtle instead. Here is a view of his butt.
Where the wild things are. They are helping you to open doors.
Ming Xiaoling, 明孝陵, on the path to the Empress's tomb. They artfully constructed a couple dozen pairs of ten-foot high sculptures of magical beasts to line the road and welcome the dead Empress. Not that she cared at that point.
The Nanjing city wall dates back to the 1300s and is one of the dwindling original walls still standing in China today.

Not pictured: The scalper who then sold us train tickets back to Shanghai.

Good morning, Nanjing

2009-08-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

I started off my morning with this tasty yogurt made by the Nanjing Weigang Dairy, which played a big role in my existence but that is a story for another day. It's just a little sweet with a hint of clover and lemon. The yogurt, not my existence.

After all the rain in Suzhou, we're looking forward to a day or so in Nanjing. The streets here are as wide as in Shanghai, sometimes 14 lanes wide, but they are all lined with giant trees and brick sidewalks. The city is bustling but somehow not frenetic.

Our sleepy friend on the steps of Nanjing Teachers' University

2009-08-13T00:37:00.000-07:00

Wuxi

2009-08-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

On the way to Suzhou, about three hours northwest of Shanghai by train, we pass the town of Wuxi, 无锡. For generations, it's gray-green hills were a source of tin, or xi, 锡, and so for most of history it was known simply as Xi. But eventually the stores were depleted, and the town was wu xi, without tin, and so it became known.

From the dining car, Wuxi looks like many of the growing urban centers just outside of China's main cities. A common sight are scores of identical thirty-story cement and rust high-rises encircling a single patch of communal grass. I imagine the families in the little one-story shanties just outside their perimeter, anticipating the day they will move into a thirty-story cement and rust high-rise encircling a single patch of communal grass of their own.

I checked and there is no town in China, or anywhere in the world, by the name of Wubiyao, 无必要, without want or need.

Foraging in public places

2009-08-12T17:08:00.000-07:00

Ah, what is lovelier than a pale pink lotus in bloom? You can find them in freshwater on the edge of lakes and ponds. Or in the middle of a garden crowded with tour guides bellowing into megaphones about the cost of the landscaping in today's dollars and asking visitors to identify which rock formation looks like a lion.

After a few weeks, the flower sheds its petals and turns into a green stalk packed tightly with seeds.

And that is when you eat it.

Glass and stone and fried fish

2009-08-11T01:40:00.000-07:00

I.M. Pei, illustrious architect and maker of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has a number of ties to Suzhou, the most recent of which is as the designer of the new Suzhou Museum. Besides being the perfect place to go on a rainy afternoon (admission is free), the museum is worth a visit if only to see the glass and granite courtyard, which is reminiscent of his Pyramide du Louvre but with overt Chinese flair like small rocks shaped like giant mountains and fancy carp.

To our surprise, the lovely woman helping us in the museum shop turned out to be Mr. Pei's niece and, again to our surprise, is a fellow Ohioan! With her help, we picked up some fun souvenirs and a restaurant recommendation: Wumen Renjia, 吴门人家, a converted home and garden specializing in Suzhou cuisine (Read: sweet and fried) at 31 Panru Xiang, 潘儒巷31号. It's just three blocks from the museum. Exit the museum gate and turn east (left) on Dongbei Jie, 東北街, then turn south (right) at the bridge. Walk a block down Yuanling Lu, 园林路, and walk a block. The restaurant is in the quiet alley, just to your right. It looks like this:

Windows

2009-08-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Suzhou is known for its elaborate gardens. These spaces were never intended for the crowds that pass through these days but were instead the private courtyards, usually of scholars, living as long ago as 1000 AD. Those scholars wanted to do their calligraphy in peace, and so the landscape architects of the time accomplished amazing feats with strategically placed trees, water, and stone. Stepping into these gardens today is like donning noise-canceling headphones. Suddenly, the peal of bus brakes and lost tourists gives way to the sounds of a waterfall, a flock of song birds, or the wind, and all you can hear is whatever was meant to be heard.

We visited a number of gardens, each with its own unique aesthetic and ingenious design, but a favorite was Canglang Ting, 沧浪亭, the Great Wave Pavilion, for its 108 windows, no two of which are alike. This garden was also of special interest to my dad, who had read a poem about it as a boy, and seventy years later got to see it.

Itinerary

2009-08-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

We are in a holding pattern for a few days until the TAR travel permit comes through. The plan is this:

A few days around Shanghai (including short trips to Suzhou, Nanjing, and so forth);
10 days in Xizhang Province (Tibet);
36 hours on the Tibet-Qinghai train from Lhasa to Xi'an;
A few days in Xi'an; and finally,
A few days in Chengdu or Shanghai (we have some votes for pandas and some votes for shopping).

Right now, my biggest concern is the cold I have had for three weeks and what will happen when my brain goes from 0 to 14,000 feet when the plane door opens in Lhasa.

A boring but wonderful hotel in Shanghai

2009-08-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Now that I've lived in a variety of condos, service apartments, luxury retreats, and one-star hotels in Shanghai, I can confidently offer a recommendation for the place to stay: Rayfont Shanghai Xuhui Hotel, 瑞峰酒店, 7 Zhaojiabang Road (Ruijin Road), 8621-54077000. As the sign says so plainly, this is not a place for celebrities. It's a place for normal people, you know, celeberities.If you want to experience the delights of traveling abroad that come with, say, design details by a hot New York hotelier, mildewed curtains framing a view of the Bund, or midnight calls from ladies offering massages, try any number of already discovered hotels listed in the guidebooks. If you want an exceptionally soft, clean bed, in-room Internet that works, rooms without the taint of smoke, and decent water pressure, come here.

Rayfont has two other locations in the city, but this one is the newest and in the relatively low-key, southwest corner of the French Concession, in an area that was once the stomping grounds of an organized crime family. If that's not enough, the rooms all have flat screen TVs and delicate ceiling lights made of string.
I recommend booking a suite, as they are designed for long-term stays but are offered at prices ranging from Y480 to Y660 a night. The family suite has two bedrooms, a living room, and kitchen with full-sized refrigerator, stove, and washing machine. You can rent dishes and cookware for Y30 a day, so you can run to the corner market and cook up some crab, which is infinitely more luxurious than a mint.

Mian 麵

2009-08-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

While in China, I plan to gorge on mian in its innumerable incarnations. Traditional mian is always made from the same two basic ingredients--wheat flour and water. So, it is the method of forming the noodles that gives each variety of mian a distinctive flavor and texture.

There is mian cut from sheets of dough into very wide strips, micro-thin hairs, or somewhere in between. There is mian pulled by hand into long, thin coils. There is mian made by slicing slivers from dough as hard as a block of wood into a boiling pot of stock. There is mian made by piping a long stream of batter into fragrant oil. There is mian pulled from a roll of dough into small flecks with chopsticks. And so on.

I have experienced some of my most satisfying bowls of mian (and grilled lamb on a stick) in Muslim restaurants. This afternoon we savored a few different types, including the la mian, 拉麵, or pulled noodles, being made here and later steeped in lamb broth and topped with fresh garlic and black vinegar.

My grandfather used to make la mian for us without much ado. Maybe to him, it was like making a sandwich. Beginning with one coil of dough, he would flick his wrist and suddenly it became two. Then again and two became four. With a few more swift movements and twists, suddenly he had an armful of white noodles, all just the same length, width, and thickness. It was magic.

Getting into the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region)

2009-08-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

Entering Tibet requires a travel permit through the Tibet Tourism Bureau. This red tape guarantees travel agents’ their jobs (permit fee Y50, processing fee Y450) and filters out travelers who can’t plan a week in advance. Since the application requires copies of everyone’s passports, it make things much easier to make PDFs of your passport so you can shoot it over to your travel agent of choice (most in the major cities can handle this, not just those in the jump off points of Xining, Xi'an, or Chengdu). In a pinch, you can also take a snapshot of it and convert that to a PDF. We did it this way and will get ours in four days, including express mail delivery to our hotel in Shanghai.

What I learned at Narita's Quarantine Office

2009-08-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

Foghorn Leghorn is, unfortunately, an H1N1 vector.

Three weeks and one bag

2009-08-08T10:54:00.001-07:00

I try to be Buddhist about travel: The key is packing light.

Up, up, and away

2009-08-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

In preparing for this trip to Tibet, I've been learning about altitude sickness. It is basically what happens when you slowly drown in air. Everyone new to altitudes above 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) will have some symptoms, but genetics are the dividing line between feeling sleep and cerebral edema. Lhasa is more than 12,000 feet (3,600 m) above sea level.

My genes are of the low-land variety and I tend to act mildly drunk for the first few days above 9,000 feet. I kept a journal when I was studying butterflies in the Rocky Mountains in college. Here is a quote: "Gathered butterfly data today and sampled nectar with micro-pipettes. Why aren't they called, 'tiny vacuums'?'"

I got a prescription for Diamox, which is the standard, Western medicine for this sort of thing. Diamox helps by making you breathe like a hamster (hyperventilate without feeling like you are hyperventilating). This helps lessen the drowning effect but if it gets too bad, the only solution is to head down the mountain. My parents are going the Eastern medicine route of chewing on medicinal herbs, so we'll see which works better.

Hello. This is an explanation of what this is all about.

2009-08-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

I find that travel advice generally falls into these categories:

1) Step off the beaten path, e.g., Get lost.
2) Don't be stupid, e.g., Avoid guys named "Giacomo" who promise a better exchange rate. Never stand behind a camel.
3) Be respectful, e.g., Don't wear jeans and tennis shoes everywhere. Speak softly. Don't point.
4) Immerse yourself, e.g., Learn the language, or at least a few choice phrases such as, "Help," and "I do not enjoy that." Talk to locals. Ask a lot of questions. Go to restaurants where the menus don't have pictures.
5) Just do what I say (because it can be really scary when things are too weird or new), e.g., Call this travel agent! Stay in Room 217 at the Hilton on Main Street! Don't drink the water!

It's this last bit of wisdom that can kill all the potential of a travel experience. Certainly, I don't advocate drinking giardia-infested water just to make a memory. But travel ought to do more than confirm expectations. In this era of virtual experiences, face-to-face conversations are all the more important for understanding each other and maybe even making this world a better place.

This is a blog about travel for those among us who want to drink the water.