Human Shields

A British friend/visitor told me his strategy for avoiding active participation during the nightly hour-long prayer and song service: get a baby, any baby, into your lap and don't let go. Having a baby gives us immunity from anything. I usually have to clap, mouth words.etc... Prayer service starts, we both call the toddler baby close to us, but he buddy talks him from a better position. So more shameless, I walk across the room and scoop up another baby, younger so he doesn't need any sweet talk. This plan is brilliant-I sit in the back, hold the baby, twirl my fingers for his attention, daydream....You can see the women glancing at us [look at them, saints, so good with children crawling into their laps] It's working like a charm, babies content, but then the plan works too well, going into overdrive, as both babies fall asleep. Mine's so comfortable that he sleeps too decadently-slobber running his face, head and body contorted wildly, snoring like a foghorn, so loud that the women hear and see the sleeping children. They come over, and one-by-one snatch our shields from us, putting the babies to bed. Bummer. Back to clapping and lip-chanting.

Coolness.

I've realized Kenyans have no appreciation for the concept of coolness. A baby fell on the ground, I scooped it up, i mean him up, got some frozen meat from the freezer to put on the back of his head, and got quizzical looks all over. If the temperature drops below 70 people bundle up and build fires in the chimney. I'll come in sweating after work, boil some water and then wait for it to cool down to drink later-I try explaining that but get only blank stares and a handful of teabags. And that's before I put it in the freezer. They think I'm crazy. In other matters of coolness, they don't care much for the art of feigning apathy, and I haven't seen one shrug of the shoulder my entire visit. If I make a sarcastic comment, it lands with a thud. Brick/airball. I couldn't survive for 3 months of straight sincerity and earnest conversation, so when a British or Dutch visitor comes (like yesterday and today) I latch on and we spend all day making snide remarks. Something about triple homicides, holding a baby in the lap so as not to have to participate at prayertime (which turns out not to be a joke but a brilliant plan), keeping diaries but insisting they're just journals, and that all that's written in them is sizes of tractor tires, depth of mud, number and sizes of spiders seen and our indifference toward those numbers,... I really like this place but I need my cynicism.

Jesse story.

Here's a story about Jesse's Peace Corps trip that was in our local paper, the Valley Morning Star. There's a quick AIESEC mention at the end, but it doesn't mention its name:

"San Benito student to travel to Cameroon with Peace Corps

By Daniel García Ordaz
Valley Morning Star
Harlingen, Texas
June 16, 2005

SAN BENITO — Perhaps it runs in the family.

Jesse Lovegren, 22, is about to embark on yet another trip overseas. By now his parents, James and Suzanne, are used to receiving e-mail from abroad.

Jesse Lovegren flew to Philadelphia for a Peace Corps orientation on Tuesday to prepare for his two-year assignment to Cameroon, a country in western, equatorial Africa with a population of 14 million.

The family’s three eldest children have each traveled alone overseas, but never for this long.

"I’m fairly comfortable, as much as a parent can be," James Lovegren said. "We haven’t heard anything alarming about Cameroon, mostly good stories."

Jesse Lovegren chose to tell his mother about his Peace Corps commitment by asking her for money for a dental visit.

"I asked if he was having problems with his teeth," she said. "He said the Peace Corps wouldn’t accept him until he got his tooth filled."

According to the Peace Corps, Cameroon was a former British and French colony. Jesse Lovegren will be teaching science in French.

Suzanne Lovegren said that her great, great grandfather, Jean Marial Lapeyre, of Ascain, France, was quite a linguist and spoke several languages besides French.

"Our daughter, Natalie, was a linguist major at UT," she said. "And Jesse speaks fluent Spanish, some Portuguese and now French."

Jesse Lovegren’s father, James Lovegren, said that an affinity for languages and world travel is not the only bond his children share. All the Lovegren children who have completed high school graduated from the Science Academy in Mercedes.

"I’m not surprised because he’s been quite a traveler and adventurer," said James Lovegren about his son, who an Eagle Scout. "He’s been in Shanghai, China, and he’s gone to Central America."

Will Jesse Lovegren’s other siblings, August Lovegren, 18, Joseph Lovegren, 16, and Audrey Lovegren, 10, follow in his footsteps? His globetrotting children have paid their own way, James Lovegren said.
Natalie Lovegren, 25, studied in Morocco and visited India while in college. Philip Lovegren, 20, is in Kenya for the summer, planting trees. He and Jesse Lovegren joined a global organization that matches foreign students with domestic jobs."

Malaria pill fun.

I've been taking Lariam-the weekly malaria pill that Jesse and others warned me about. Some Irish girls and an Australian couple visited and told me they refuse to even prescribe it in their home countries due to the nightmares and mental effects it's supposed to cause.
I've had fun with it but I guess it's been going overboard. I was flying to Sweden from Kenya the other night, running to the terminal in the nick of time and I reached for my passport and lunged forward to present it at the gate but the bulk in my pocket was just a wad of 7-11 coupons as I had packed my passport in checked-in baggage. Somehow that got resolved so I was in London on the layover and wondering what plane to get on and the guy said-"Kenya, right here." So I sat down in my seat relieved until realizing that was the place I was going away from. Also that night 2 cousins and 2 friends died, all on seperate occasions. And I got a care package (for some reason not from C-Team but from my high school principal) addressed to me, the principal of the school. At first I was embarrassed because I just work at the home/farm/maybe school and thought the Kenyans would think I had told them I was the principal, but I opened it and inside was the Daily Texan announcing that George Bush had been re-re-elected, this time by a margin of 214 votes in Minnesota. Nice going, Trent.
But now they're not bad and vivid enough for me to control them. I was making small talk with a middle school teacher telling me to stop by and I told her I'd be out of the country for 8 months but it was cool 'cause I have free time to stop by in dreams. Little kids chatter and stare and whisper in front of me and my bed when I'm still sleeping in the morning, but that part's real.

Land of Flying Jaguar Sharks

Kenya's fun. Around here they have tons of birds that have got to be better than the birds of paradise. I've seen big storks and something like looks like a Kiwi, some blue finches, the yellowest bird i've ever seen, and the bluest and the orangest, and another shimmery/shiny blue bird that looks like the uniform of one of the more flamboyantly gay figure skaters. The thought of them would be considered absurd and tacky if they didn't get an exemption for being real. The best comparision is with the Jaguar Shark on Life Aquatic.
My AIESEC job started to suck, because it had just been manual labor, which is ok and makes you feel like you've done a good day's work, but not an AIESEC level traineeship or anything I came to Kenya for-I could be moving trees in a plant nursery at home, so I got fed up and have started working on projects like improving the website and researching info on good plants of Kenyan wetlands to grow on the farm, all until I get a job at the school with the children, which should be fun.
They're polite-my first few minutes after arriving at the farm a kid walked up and instead of saying "gimme five, up high, on the side, downlow, too slow" told me "gimme five, up high, on the side, downlow-I am sorry but you are not fast enough." A few of the older ones who know English compete to see who can teach me the most Swahili. A baby who falls down and cries sounds like a push mower being started: first a few low broken crackles like when you first pull the string, and then a stead and loud whirling sound.
We went to the waterfall yesterday when I spent the weekend with the AIESECers at Moi. It was nice but we got the 3 of spades stuck in a deep crevice and spent about 40 minutes with sticks and gum to finally get it out, a necessary endeavor because the VC plague has spread to Africa. The rest of Kenya is very scenic too.
Tusker Beer is good and rich, a bottle of Kenya King gin will get all your drinking needs taken care of for 40 shillings (+-50 cents) and when I was sick with a cold, the students prescribed 575ml of Safari Brandy, which ran about 2 dollars.
AIESEC MOI has squabbles and factions identical to AIESEC Austin. We stood in a circle for about 20 minutes as they debated whether only 4 people were enough of a quorum vote on going to the waterfall to be an official AIESEC activity, and whether to consider it one of the VLC events. It was funny, and as in Austin I walked off with the "Fuck this bullshit" faction, and all factions eventually had fun at the falls. Also the more cleancut wondered if trainees should be encouraged to drink. As the trainee, I gave my qualified opinion.
Lastly, all of Kenya is very green and scenic, but I can't explain without being cheap. Maybe some pictures later.

Combustion.

Most combustible reactions:
1: Asking a puppy "who's a puppy?!"
2: Giving gum to a baby.
3: a Kenyan taxi driver and Kenyan cop.

Ninachua kiswahil kidogo-I know a tiny Swahili, the everyday language. It's mostly just interesting but sometimes a bit intimidating, like when I have to sit through prayer services, already boring in English but now in Swahili, or when I was in the matatu (Toyota version of the Volkswagen Hippie vans used in Kenya for taxi purposes) at night driving back into the country, and there was a roadblock so the driver just drove around the other cars on the other side of the road and when the barrier finally made it stop, a cop came running over and started screaming at the matatu driver and reached for the ignition and slapped the driver in the face. Everyone else in the car was screaming at the cop in flamethrowing rapidfire Swahili, but the cop's insistence on respect became increasingly more absurd and no one was buying it, so the cop ran back and summoned the army officer, who came opened the door and tried to enter, but then the driver drove away with the officer hanging on the side, door still ajar, and he eventually had to jump off. It was a bit much but I thought if I waited it out it would soon be hilarious, which it was. everyone was laughing hysterically, including me, but maybe I didn't deserve to since it seemed the laughter was a reward for taking part in the Swahili driver/cop throwdown.

I Want My MTV

I took off from the US for Kenya then Sweden about two weeks ago. The first time I got excited about this wasn't when I left from home for the last time or took off from the US for the first time or other official benchmarks through which to start a journey: I'd say "that's it, you're gone" when leaving or "there we go, none of that continent or hemisphere for 8 months" or other cheesy sentimental declarations I guess I felt compelled to make, but they were just prep for the waves of excitement rather than the actual waves. But then I'd sleep on my plane and wake up and be 40,000 feet over Greenland or Iceland at 3AM but the sun would still be inspecting the clouds below because we were close enough to the North Pole, or wake up another time over the Sahara. Then I'd get the good chills maybe common to Ernest Hemingway or fancy AIESECers but not me.
The airplane flight was ok but my legs naturally got stiff and I already had jetlag from the previous trip across the Atlantic, so I got cranky thoughts about why I felt compelled to send myself to Kenya, maybe like those of a frog who feels a need to set out with his cousin the Horny Toad, but then the Horny Toad decides on Arizona. But I only felt the weariness and dryness(from airplane air) a little, never any moment of dread like when the frog thinks "it can't be too bad 'cause frogs aren't that different from toads," and the Horny Toad tells him he's actually a lizard and it was just a jackass scientis or local playing with them, and the frog asks despairingly "why wouldn't they have made it a little more obvious, like the paleontoligist who named a dinosaur after Dire Straits Frontman Mark Knopler or the wiseguys who named two dung beetles after George Bush and Dick Cheney?" And they just before the frog dies of thirst the horney toad/lizard tells him that since they're so distantly related the frog's kids won't even be in the will. Wouldn't that suck?
Anyway, that's NOT how it was.
The only moment remotely close was when I folded my dinner tray and heard the sickening crackle of plastic and thought my CDs were gone and that I'd have to watch 7 hours straight of Everybody Loves Raymond and a sitcom about a square white married couple and their hip black newlywed neighbors. But it was just my plastic watercup.
So I've been in Kenya a week. It's awesome.

Going to Kenya

I'm sitting in my sister's apartment in Houston, taking care of a six-pack of Red Dog and a bag of beef jerky. I'm fixing to leave to Kenya tomorrow, and the Kenyans are excited to hear stereotypical Texas things from their soon-to-be guest. I won't disappoint, as I'm spending my last night here getting drunk and eating an entire bag of jerky. Peppered. None of that teryaki bullshit.
Thurday morning, June 2: Leave Houston at 9, get to Chicago O'Hare. DODY, I'll be there from 1129 AM till 425. Email me at philip.lovegren@mail.utexas.edu. if you'd be up for having lunch. Johnny gave me your number but it wiped off my hand.
Then I'll leave for Sweden, then to London.
Then from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, I'll be in London. Any AIESECers in London? I'd like to hang out if y'all are out there.
Then if's off to Kenya until AUGUST 16. I'll be working with the famous former Olympic gold-medalist Kip Keino. He once won an upset gold in Mexico City, ran marathons barefoot, and was names Sports Illustrated's man of the Year, but used his fame to buy a ranch with which to start a children's home with his wife. I'll be helping them out at the home: dealing out homework skills to the children, organizing sports games, construction, farming, building greenhouses, and administering the school. Hey SALAAMers (Williams and Burbach, etc...) y'all should pay me a visit in Kenya, since it's onliy a country or two down.
I'll be in the Great Rift Valley of National Geographic fame, and I'll be pumped up for it by my malaria vaccine: it's supposed to cause nightmares so I'll substitute the polar bears that chase me around circular objects with lions and cheetsahs.
AUGUST-JANUARY: Uppsala, Sweden. This is where I will culminate my Renaissance OGXer goal of joining three different LCs(Austin, MOI-Kenya, Uppsala-Sweden) and matching peoplein each. It's gonna be fun.

Johnny: Sorry for not calling back. First I forgot, then it was late.