testing my RSS feed, which seems to have stopped updating itself.

HI !

hello hellooo, this is kafka. quaintly is away saving the world so i get to sit in this chair and tell my stories :) i spent last christmas break exactly the way i wanted – lounging in the pleasantly warm winter of my surrogate hood in the upper west side with her. we went to the movies, shopped for presents and caught up with old friends. we even got a small, spriggy christmas tree, a charlie brown kind which i dubbed ‘the little tree that could’. o tannenbaum, did we put the nicest ornaments on you: toy soldiers, shining star and all! but the cold did get to us eventually and so a few weeks ago, we decided to exchange a temperamental heater for a short trip down south to sunny New Orleans. quaintly likes to call it N’awlins, twanging the Cajun accent considerably better than i can whenever we talk to the locals. and they were some of the nicest, friendliest people we’ve met, serving us sweet moonshine whiskey and sharing their favourite food haunts so generously. which is how we found ourselves ooh-ing and aah-ing to the best soul-soothing gumbo, shrimp and grits, and batter fried alligator the city had to offer. quaintly will probably beat me with a stick for doing so little justice to the gorgeous food we had, so i’ll leave it to her to say more next time (plus, she has all our pictures!). but in between shopping for antiques and stumbling into labyrinthine cemeteries, it was a much deserved holiday with my number one travel person.

like almost everyone, i like to travel. i know it’s probably an accessible truism in this modern age of budget airlines and online travel forums, but it’s always a pleasure to chuck my stuff into a bag and just pour out into the world. some of my fonder memories have been in places like the sleepy seaside town of Montauk and the mountaintop Incan ruins of Machu Picchu. i have a soft spot for sunrises (as i do for lazy picnics and urban parks), and watching the sun rise over the great Atlantic or the lost city of the Incas, i’m reminded of what i cherish most about my travels: having the luxury of time to muse. there’s just something about being transplanted to a new place amongst new people. without much coaxing, my mind turns to conjuring up all manner of speculations from the banal to the fantastic. why does a city allow garbage to pile up in the piazzas? why does fish cost so much when we’re surrounded by the Mediterranean? and mainly for quaintly’s benefit, i sometimes frame my musings in catchy jingle and rhyme. while she never fails to give me her sweetest layan face, her probing questions such as the one on the existential lament of my turnip song tell me that she secretly enjoys it. and i secretly quite enjoy her ripostes to my endless hypotheticals too. ultimately, it doesn’t matter what we do or where we go; boarding a plane with quaintly is a special kind of adventure that i hold close to my heart for the discoveries, inane jokes and moments that sneak up from behind me and change my life. when she gets back from saving the world, i’ll have to remember to tell her how easy she’s made all this for me. and then maybe we’ll go looking for more gumbo.

look at what i got in my christmas card stash this season!

the first thing that struck me about Nairobi was how much it looked like KL. the peeling paint on the walls of the shoplots that lined the streets, the old colonial bungalows, and even the fact that we had to be wary of snatch thieves all culminated in warm, soft feelings that made me feel so homesick as we rumbled down all the streets named after white settlers, in that little white van. even the richer residential areas of the city are designed in that roughly manicured Bangsar style, and my heart fluttered so wildly when we ate at a curbside stall that used milo tins to hold their cutlery.

a boy purchasing schoolbooks while the owner of the bookshop helps him check the books off his booklist. i haven’t seen booklists in so long, and it was such a nostalgic sight. i can’t even remember if they’re actually called booklists. aiyah senarai buku teks lah

we’ve since traveled to four other cities in Kenya, spending the most time on the edge of the country where it borders Uganda — in a dusty, rural town of 30,000 people where there is only one paved road. it’s a small town, but our research has taken our small team of four up, down, over and across that one paved road to meet some of the most inspirational people i have ever had the good fortune to talk to. the average household income per month in this town is only ~RM 207, but an average of near 20% of that income is spent on education for their children. people here are simply crazy about learning, and given their limited resources it seems that they do it so much better than us, with our sprawling well-stocked libraries and many teaching assistants. it is a humbling process to interview a group of single mothers who would sleep in kitchens to save rent money just so they can put their daughters through 6 years of primary school education, or to listen to my colleagues transcribe an interview with young schoolchildren who were so utterly enthralled with tales of American universities. for primary school students whose first language is Swahili or their native dialect, their command of the English language is so firm and yet communicated in such pleasant demeanor. these kids devour any books that they can lay their hands on, and their younger siblings frequently trail after us reciting one to a hundred in English at the top of their lungs. if only their drive could fuel the world.

on trips like these, i inevitably enter what has become to me a very recognizable cycle of emotions that i will anxiously churn through as the days and weeks go by. at first i am curious of the real life state of affairs that i will soon encounter outside of online information, case studies and proposal packets. then i am hopeful about the extent of my ability to do what i came to do, or simply to be as useful as i can be. then comes the part where i become increasingly cynical of the program’s intentions, its clear exploitation of me, us, them, the rural/urban divide, and the general inefficiency and lack of transparency throughout. then i become extremely angry at myself for contributing to what i sincerely believe is an ethical dilemma or a silly faux empowerment exercise that benefits the volunteers more than it does the needy. then i think to myself, okay screw that, let’s just make the most of what we have, and simply… be as useful as i can be. and i suppose that’s when i start seeing all sorts of wonderful things that are hidden in places we are told to look. it’s there, it’s there, they’ll say, and we won’t necessarily see it, but we’ll find something else instead.

sometimes on very ordinary days, ordinary things happen to me that make me realize how much i’ve changed in a short span of time. yesterday, in preparation for my trip to Kenya, i took the same brand of anti-malarial pills that i took one year ago when i went to Honduras. within ten minutes i was swimming in an uncomfortable swirl of nausea, vertigo and a pounding headache. so i canceled all my plans to sleep off the symptoms, only to have my sleep ridden with the most horrid of nightmares, one of which included being chased by an ex-boyfriend that by himself constitutes a nightmare o_O a quick google search when i woke up relayed that bad dreams — along with nausea and dizziness — are some side effects of the anti-malarial pill. this didn’t once happen to me when i took the pills daily in Honduras. it’s funny how my body has developed an aversion to the pill in less than a year. it’s also funny how i’m getting airsick (i’m on the plane en route to Kenya) right now as i type this, as i’ve never been airsick in my life. it’s kinda like how i discovered when i was 16 that i could no longer ride on rollercoasters (and i love rollercoasters) without throwing up.

light-hearted discoveries aside, i think in the same year i’ve changed more than i’d have liked to. it was only some weeks ago that i wrote here briefly how sometimes it feels like i can’t feel anything but anger. i’m not sure if i’ve become an angrier person generally, or if i’m just starting to actually realize what an angry person i’ve always been. towards the latter, i think kafka has that effect on me.. he is so kind, patient and objective all the time that sometimes i feel like the most belligerent and angry person on earth just by existing in the same space as his. it was really hard saying goodbye before i left for the airport earlier this morning.

but i suppose a sense of sedar diri doesn’t exclude the fact that i may just be getting angrier as i grow older. or simply more jaded. i take less pleasure in the little things in life these days. i remember how in my freshman year at college i was so excited to go out and play in the snow. this winter all i did was complain about how cold it was. and the guy next to me on the flight right now is one of those elbow room invaders. my first reaction was some kind of dissatisfaction — surely, i too am entitled to some space on the arm rest! i ran through some passive aggressive and aggressive aggressive strategies in my head to get him to give up some space. ask him nicely? pointedly stare at said offensive elbow? or just jostle him really hard?

then a lot of shame followed. what, really, is the big flipping deal about arm rest space? he’s an old guy and flying alone, surely i can give him all of my damn elbow room. so i did. and now his head is almost falling onto my shoulder as he sleeps. slightly uncomfortable, but oh well. it’s the least i can do for harbouring angry and self-entitled thoughts in the first place.

this year, if i have to have a resolution, i want to learn again how to be the bigger person, and what that really means. in my quest towards equity and justice (jeng jeng jeng!), i think i’ve forgotten what it is to be kind. i suppose that needs to change.

ok bye, really got to go, air sickness is getting very bad, and it’s difficult to type with an old dude’s head resting on my shoulder!