Be the Change You Wish to See on Facebook

We all seem to simultaneously love and loathe Facebook.  I roll my eyes at loads of status updates, including my own, yet I post away.  I see status updates wherein Facebookers reflect on how tiresome and narcissistic social media sites are.  We love to hate it, and we hate to love it.  It’s just so darn efficient!  But it’s also like a virtual world, and by virtual, I kind of mean fake.

Facebook allows us to do our own PR, to some extent.  We can create this online persona in just a few easy clicks.  And for the most part, we want that persona to appear shining and beautiful and happy.  We seek to put our most glamorous side first:  the best pictures, the most witty, quippy status updates, the most relevant and hard-hitting interviews, the funniest Onion articles.  I get it – it’s the same reason we all wear nice clothes out on the town, versus stained, schlumpy sweatpants and our old tennis camp sweatshirt.  (Unless we live in Brooklyn, then indeed we might wear a look that says “just-pulled-from-hamper,” but in Brooklyn it’s ironic and hip and paired with the perfect aviator Raybans.)  We want people to think highly of us; we want to be well-liked.  It’s natural.

So how do you feel when you read Facebook?  I get the appeal of the instant connection.  You can check up on two dozen friends’ lives over one cup of coffee from your kitchen table.  You can feel “in touch” so quickly.  But I have to tell you, I sometimes read Facebook and get totally down.  Why?  Because nothing ever seems to be wrong with anyone on Facebook.  Everyone just went for “a burning 10-mile run” or “kicked some ass at the gym with my trainer.”  Or they are “going to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner…whatever shall I wear??”  They “love, love, love the Hamptons” or they’re “JFK -> CDG -> MXP -> PRG”.  They are “out at the Soho House/TenJune/Pink Elephant, models and bottles.”  They’ve just made “the perfect beef bourguignon” or “a gorgeous port wine reduction sauce.”  I’m exaggerating a bit here, but you get the picture.  No one posts pictures of cellulite or double chins or embarrassing ketchup stains on Facebook.  No one posts about “rockin a Quiznos sandwich.”  No one burns dinner, or has their foundation garments hanging out of their clothes.  My point is, if I let my mind drift this way, reading Facebook makes me feel like my life is so flawed.  Have you ever heard that Simpsons line where Homer says “I’m so hungry I could eat at Arby’s!”  My life seems so Arby’s so much of the time, but everyone else appears Le Cirque.

I’m reminded often of my friend Erica Carrig – an amazing woman – who in law school had a big interview with one New York law firm.  When asked what she liked to do in her spare time she answered, “honestly?  Weeeellll … pretty much … eat Doritos on my couch and watch Days of our Lives.”  I loved that answer.  (And apparently the law firm did too, because Erica is now about to make partner there.)  People love honesty.  It’s fresh.  Invigorating.  For me, it’s totally inspiring.  It makes me feel better about myself and my foibles. 

Last August, I decided to experiment with honesty and make a series of confessions on Facebook.  I took one week, seven days, and posted one embarrassing, confessional status update each day.  This was stuff I wasn’t crazy about people knowing.  I just wanted to recalibrate, and to stop trying to be someone online who I am not offline.  I wanted to stop annoying myself with…myself.  You know, for the most part people seemed really refreshed by the honesty.  But then at the end of the seven days, I overheard a friend say to someone else “did you see those confessions, are you kidding me?  Why didn’t she confess about [this one totally horrible thing I did while in my first marriage.] ”  I couldn’t’ reply or defend myself because I wasn’t meant to overhear.  But this was so incredibly gutting.  So totally deflating.  You can’t even put confessions out there without people digging through them qualitatively and saying “Please go ahead and confess the very worst – don’t waste our time with this middling stuff.” 

I wish we’d all feel secure enough in ourselves to be able to post the good, the bad and the ugly.  But I’m one to talk – I’m not that secure.  Modesty aside, it’s very unlikely that I’ll post a picture of myself in a bathing suit, or even standing in unflattering light.  I might post the vaguely embarrassing things I do, but not the ones that make me really cringe.  I won’t wax poetic about my weight gain, or how I tore a $200 pair of J.Brand jeans by aspiring to wear one size too small.  But then again maybe I’ll try to…  and I sure would love if other folks would too.  Wouldn’t that make Facebook that much more fun?

Chat soon,

Liz

p.s. per paragraph 2, the funniest Onion article I’ve read is this:  http://www.theonion.com/articles/hey-you-got-something-to-eat,11163/   Just doesn’t get old.

Peace (and a Farewell to Africa…for now…)

It’s our last night in South Africa, and we’ve just tucked Finn into his warm little bed for his last night of sleep here. How he’s flourished over the past two months. When we first brought him to the beach, our first week here, Finn wouldn’t let his feet touch the sand. He’d tuck them under him, froglike, finally lifting them to shoulder level, all to avoid the unfamiliar damp grit. His San Diego-raised mama hated to imagine what he was thinking, most likely Can we catch a cab outta here stat? City boy, our Finn, or so I feared. When I did force him to step on the sand, he motioned frantically for me to scoop him up. Perched safely in my arms, he pointed sternly to the sea, a tiny dictator. Wash my feet off, he commanded with furrowed eyebrows. I hurried to acquiesce, and after a few splashes of salt water to clean off sandy piggies, the brows softened and his smile returned. Disaster averted.

Flash forward seven weeks. Today as we sat in the back garden making “rock soup,” a bare-footed, huge-grinned Finn strode undeterred through the dirt, over a heap of tiny pebbles, and onto some scattered firewood. He grabbed a number of “ingredients” from the shrubbery and tossed them in his soup pot, hands as brown as a miner’s. A few light twigs stuck in his wispy light brown hair. Like the animals surrounding us, he has become quite wild here, and seems very much in his element.

I haven’t blogged for a few weeks. I think that’s because so much has been changing for us here, in such miraculous ways. There are some developments too personal to go into the medium of a blog, but I’ll sum up. Through what can be termed “Amazing Grace,” our faith has returned with such fire. (It had been waning, suffice it to say.) With the return of strong faith, we have been flooded with peace. And such contentment – the sort that’s both simple and gentle, and the sort that makes you want to shout and sing. (That said, if you ever live with us for more than a day, you’ll see that shouting and singing are always part of the Grennan family repertoire – it’s sort of what we do.)

If we are not busy drowning it out, there are a few times when we hear God speaking to us in a “still, small voice.” We first heard that quiet voice here in South Africa through a rock star named Frank. Crazy long curly hair, model-chisled face, and dressed like an MTV veejay, yet strangely shy, Frank approached us with a huge, perfect smile at this weekly “life group” meeting we had gone to through our church. When he began to speak, both Conor and I leaned in, straining to hear his voice – so faint that it was barely audible. It wasn’t just the din of the gathering (25 strong in a small apartment), it was the fact that Frank speaks at the decibel that Muzak plays in an elegant department store elevator. Ambient sound. But we soon realized that Frank (who actually is a kind of rock star, as life would have it) had spent so much time with God in his life that we needed to listen as hard as we could.  What he said to us spoke straight to our heart, as if mainlined. We were pretty speechless. At the end of the night, Frank prayed for us, and we felt immediately in God’s healing presence. We later joked that maybe we were the only ones who actually saw Frank that night, that maybe he was as angelic as he was ethereal.  (He is real though, I’ve since Facebooked with him.)  This sounds all very religious, I know, and I’ll apologize now for that. But I’m telling you, this prayer, that night, and all the events that followed – as if connected by a golden thread – has just been nothing short of miraculous.

Also Conor rode an ostrich. Really, he did, you may have seen the video I posted on Facebook. We had gone to Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital of the world, by virtue of our magical friendship with this couple, Marianne and Charl. We met this couple randomly at a coffee house in Franschoek, after Finn made eyes at their angelic 10-month old girl, with blue eyes, blond curly hair and cheeks like a beautiful marshmallow. Not able to resist, Finn grinned, pulled up his shirt and showed off his big, white belly to her.  We apologized to her parents, and got to chatting.  The next day, we found ourselves at a braai (barbecue, but more sophisticated) at their sprawling, ranch-style house, where pinotage and biltong in hand, Conor and Charl concocted the idea of a roadtrip. A few days later, we found ourselves in a caravan, driving four hours toward the Eastern Cape, through purple mountains majesty. We were greeted by most of Charl’s family, and the most astoundingly delicious potjiekos (lamb stew slow cooked for seven hours on the braai). The weekend continued with a climb through local caves, a visit to an ostrich farm (will let the pictures speak for themselves), and a tour through a wild animal park (Finn and the meercats adored one another, each popping up, peeping and grinning at the other). The entire weekend was totally delicious.

During the work week, along with our dear friend Debbi (who is Finn’s godmother, and the woman who would take custody of Finn should we ever meet our untimely death by, say, being trampled by ostriches) and with our new friend Chris, we finished our volunteer work here. In the last few mornings we’d wake early to head through the mountain pass up to Grabouw, and into the shanty towns. You know when you volunteer, then you’re done and you think to yourself “well, that was worth doing, but I sure am glad it’s over.” That wasn’t us. We all found a profound sense of loss when we left, hugging the careworkers tightly as we posed for last minute photos. We’ll really, really miss those visits to the sick. It’s not because we are self-sacrificing, we are so not (we’re actually quite lazy).  It’s because they are beautiful, these people.  Their vulnerability, strength, and laughter are beautiful, as is, in a strange way, their grief.

On Thursday we were able to meet with Adrian, one of the heads of Thembalitsha (and a Grennan family hero, to be sure), and with the municipality – a vibrant redhead named Annelise. Together we discussed the best means of canvassing the community, and to try to generate means of benchmarking social progress. Annelise, with a mind as seasoned as a top business executive, bandied about numbers and statistics but stuck always to the bottom line – improving conditions for her people. I left the meeting impressed, humbled, and filled with apple tart.  I’m so glad we got to play the smallest of parts in initiating the community assessment.

We spent our last blissful weekend here spending time with the people we love the most here. Adrian and Gerrida Lange had us over to their farm for Saturday lunch. Our afternoon included galoshes, a bowl of feed, and a chase of the Lange’s sheep Nolly, and newborn lamb, Olly, through the meadow so Finn could pat them. The sheep proved elusive, so Finn settled instead on the dogs and cats roaming about. His delighted, high-pitched shriek of victory whenever he closed in on one eventually led to what appeared to be a pet caucus, wherein they each pledged to permanently avoid the grabby toddler.

A few hours at the Lange’s table was even richer than the (outrageously delicious) malva pudding they served us for dessert. So much mentorship flowed from our friends into us during that afternoon, it felt as though an entire season had passed within one sunny winter afternoon. I hate leaving our friends here, it will leave a big hole within us.

So it’s bittersweet that we head back to New York City tomorrow. We’ll be there for a few days before heading down to a friend’s wedding in Virginia. Then, after visits to DC and Annapolis, we’ll head back up to find a place to live and to begin our new, post-Africa lives. If you come over to our new house, you’ll see hanging in our soon-to-be dining room an oil painting. It’s a scene of Stellenbosch in the winter, as painted by our artist friend Gerrida. It’s so reminiscent of our time here, I can’t tell if we’ll look at the painting with misty eyes or bright smiles, but I imagine a bit of both.

Anyway, thank you to those of you who read my South Africa blog. It was no high literature, but it was fun writing it and I’m happy to have the trip memorialized. I close this segment of the blog with a great peace. And a farewell to Africa…but only for now…

Chat soon,

Liz

Health, Home, and Why I Should Never Teach Preschool

Following an unfortunate set of events, I spent my early morning today in a South African emergency room.  (I’m fine now, thank you for asking though.)  The antibiotics I was carrying with me were failing me, and I needed both a new diagnosis and new prescription.  As a screenwriter could write an entire adaption of Homer’s Iliad set in Miami Beach and cast only with Chihuahuas while waiting to be seen in an emergency room , I had brought my iPod, my Kindle, and my new tiny Nokia phone. I was all ready to hunker down in high-tech comfort up for what I assumed would be a looooong wait.

Within seconds of my arrival, a man who looked like Beaker from the Muppets popped over the receptionist’s head. “Hell-oo!” he chirped, jolly and alert. Beaker wore a stethoscope, and looked in-the-know. He told me that I’d be seen in “one minute, give or take a minute!” Sure enough, not sixty seconds passed before his nurse emerged to collect me. She told me to lie down on this gurney, and began to take vitals. [Warning – this next bit is embarrassing.] The nurse said she needed to take a blood and urine sample. The blood was no problem. The other sample however… She brings me a huge Tiffany-blue colored bedpan covered with a stiff paper towel, and looks at me as if to say “right, get to it.” I looked at her, then down at the covered bedpan, then back at her again. I asked “what am I meant to do here exactly? I mean, how should this paper towel be used?” She started describing something that I knew would end badly for both of us, so I tried to stall. “In the States we usually, you know, go in a cup.” She looks at me silently for a moment, then goes back in the supply room and comes out with a juice glass. As in, like, a literal juice glass. But I felt like I had already failed the bedpan test, so I just took the glass and got going (excuse the pun).

Beaker and the nurse chattered back and forth in Afrikaans, while I asked him a series of health questions (he being a captive audience). I told him we were working in Grabouw, visiting TB patients, and could we contract TB did he think? “Yes!” He said cheerily. “Yes, do call me if you start coughing.” Of course my chest gave a heave right at that moment, and I couldn’t help but start to cough. He smiled gently the way an indulgent parent smiles at their child’s lame pun. Beaker handed me four prescriptions, wished me luck, and sent me on my way. The whole trip took 40 minutes.

Nauseated and drowsy from the meds, I couldn’t go anywhere today so I found myself a bit of a hausfrau. Our awesome nanny Leigh (a super-cute professional field hockey player home in South Africa during her off-season) was delayed on her flight in from Durban, so she couldn’t make it here today. So it was just me, Finn, and the cleaner assigned to this house, Sammy. Sammy is young, Xhosa, and very, very round. She’s really, really terrible at cleaning (wow is she terrible), but she loves Finn, so I love her.

Sammy and I got to chatting.

“Where do you live, Yooo-nited States?”

“Yep, New York City. It’s awesome and warm.”

“Do you see Usher there?”

“Usher the singer? Um, no. But he is amazing, isn’t he.”

“If I were to go to New York, the first thing I do would be to see Daze and World Tons.”

“Pardon me?” I said, trying to shove macaroni into Finn’s face.

“Daze, you do not know Daze? Our lives?”

“Oh, right, Days of our Lives! And As the World Turns. No, I’ve never seen them, and I think they’re shot in Los Angeles, not New York. Are they good shows?”

“You know not Daze?? She asked skeptically, flashing me right back to grad school in London, and this arrogant German student saying “You know not Goethe??” (You just pronounced his name weird, ok Johannes? Sheesh.)

Sammy, thinking I probably didn’t know very much at all about the United States, tried again a few minutes later. “You know Beyonce?”

“Of course!” I said, relieved to be able to contribute. “She’s totally fabulous, gorgeous, married to Jay Z.” (I added this little bit in to prove that I definitely knew who she was.)

Sammy merely sniffed. “You must have second baby before you turn 40 or you end up like Halle Berry.” And she walked away.  Thanks a lot Sammy.

Yes, Baby Part Deux, we’re very excited for the sequel. Maybe we’ll get good news later this year, God willing. Speaking of things I’m longing for, I’ve become so very excited to return to the United States and set up house and home. I think about the slums we visit in the townships. We went to one woman’s house, it was about 25 square feet and almost pitch black. (Smaller than our bathroom here.) The woman had only one nostril, the other was gone, due to disease, perhaps? I know that description sounds jarring, but she was actually beautiful . Her house fit a small pallet, a small stool, and a variety of trash items, very artfully placed. She had created a cozy, homelike setting. Old newspaper covered the walls, plastic bags formed a small ledge. She had a small pile of embroidered throw pillows on her little bed that I later learned she sold in the townships. Each house we go into is such a home. No matter how meager, I’ve seen that the residents make such an effort, and it never fails to choke me up – their carefully hung pictures, and small, coordinated stacks of knick knacks. I want a home.

Lastly, a quick follow up on Graceland Preschool. On one of our last days at Graceland, I was bombarded in the breadbasket by a little wild one named LeighAnn, charging at me like a linebacker. She is one of the tots the teachers always worry about, as she comes to school with her feet black, her face dirty, and without foundation garments. I picked up LeighAnn and threw her over my shoulder as she pointed all four limbs magnet-like toward the monkey bars. I saw all the other girls woo-hooing their way across, so I hung a grinning LeighAnn up there too. She squealed with delight, her very round belly with legs dangling down causing her to look a bit like a question mark. But then another little girl, Ayesha, ran up to say hello. I turned and walked toward this other group of girls, and spent the next five minutes miming with them to get our little stories across. Until a few minutes later when I hear a panicked Conor say “Babes, did you hang LeighAnn up on those bars?” I look over to see that poor little potbelly still dangling, now in tears, unable to get down by herself. I ran over and hoisted LeighAnn down. Sheepish. I’m a play supervisor? I’m the one who should be supervised in this yard.

We have an early morning tomorrow at Grabouw, so I’m turning in at 9 p.m. tonight – six more minutes, yeah. (So lovely when you can do that – and man, how parenthood changes you.) We’ll try to get twenty home visits done this week, with twenty more interviews completed.  We’ll present our findings next Thursday.  Then that following Tuesday we head back.  Crazy.

Chat soon,

Liz

Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist

I’m racist.  You’re probably racist too.  We’re all a bit racist (some more than others of course).  South Africans, too, are racist.  Since we’ve been in South Africa, we’ve witnessed quite a few disheartening remnants of apartheid.  I guess I could focus this blog entry on the racism surrounding us; there are plenty of stories to tell in this country.  But then again… 

Have you ever read “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller?  It’s fantastic, one of my top 20 favorite books.  The chapters are a non-linear series of musings from Miller that he calls “nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” Begging comparison to Anne Lamott, Miller is a progressive, liberal, funny Christian.  In the book, Miller attends Reed College, an institution of learning that makes UC Berkeley look conservative.  There Miller had joined a student Christian organization, his choice made more conspicuous given that Reed is supposedly the most atheist college in the country.  Miller recounts a story from this famous annual multi-day party held at Reed, a Bacchanalia of sorts.  He and other members of the Christian organization decided to put up a tent at the party, with a large label affixed:  “CONFESSIONS.”  The student Christians dressed up as monks for the event.   As the party progressed into hedonism, a few drunk students ducked inside the tent, most likely for irony’s sake (or perhaps to tell a good story afterwards).  In one of the most poignant parts of the book, once the students had sat down inside the tent, the “monks” began confessing to the students.  Apologizing for hypocrisy, confessing intolerance.  They were asking the students – not to give their confessions – but to receive a confession about Christianity’s failures.  It’s awesome.  And perfect.

 So here in South Africa, I have begun to assess my own racism.  It’s only fair. 

Jill and I went to lunch Saturday down at Sea Point, a fashionable part of Cape Town right on the water.  We were seated next to a strange couple – a dark black Xhosa girl, who looked maybe 22 years old.  We literally thought she was Naomi Campbell at first – long straight hair with bangs, model tall and thin, large sunglasses, gorgeous face.  But she was on a date with this gross British guy in his late 40’s, dirty facial stubble, greasy, receding hair, reeking of cigarette smoke and wearing a dirty soccer jersey.  As “Naomi” lavished Sleazy with affection, reclining onto the booth cushions until practically in his lap, Jill and I both jumped immediately to a series of conclusions that I can pretty safely label racist.  We assumed that he had purchased this date.  It’s entirely possible that he did, our friends tell us.  But would we have thought that if she were white?  Probably not.  We would have ascribed it merely to bad taste.

At the table on the other side of us sat three very attractive, upper class South Africans of English heritage in their late 30’s, two men and a woman.  We quickly sized them up (accurately, we later found) as “the idle rich.”  As they engaged us in conversation, they invited us to a series of parties and told us where to go shopping, making a few racist comments along the way.  “We’re going to watch a soccer match in a township later, fancy coming with?  Of course we only go during the day, we don’t dare be there at night, after all the drinking has begun.” Followed by, “Not sure if you’ve realized it yet, but there are still quite a few differences between black and white in this country.”  Having a solid group of black friends (most of whom have pedigrees and education more impressive than mine), and being very comfortable around a huge variety of ethnicities (having grown up in Southern California), I immediately felt morally superior.  We described what we were doing here for the summer – working in the townships, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t realize we were gloating. 

But then I shared where we were living.  “DeZalze Vineyard Golf Estate, in Stellenbosch.  Have you heard of it?”  One of the guys laughed at me and said “Sure, I know that place.  And a friendly FYI, golf estates are very un-P.C. in South Africa right now.  Filled with wealthy racist Boers.”  My mind flashed to the extremely whitewashed, gated complex in which we live, and in which I feel very safe.  I flushed with embarrassment.

When we first asked our friend Ilze to find us a place to live some months ago, I confessed to her my greatest fear:  Finn abducted.  The thought made me want to be violently sick.  Huge hearted Ilze just laughed at me good naturedly, and said “Sho, sis, you sound soooo American!”  But I wouldn’t relent, and demanded that she find us “the very, very safest neighborhood possible.”  She chose a gated golf estate on a vineyard in wine country.  The residents are white and wealthy; the nannies and gardeners are Xhosa. I’m not walking the talk.  I’m living segregated, and I prefer it.

One morning we met for breakfast at Tokara – the most architecturally stunning wine farm we’ve seen so far.  Caren (our model friend), Ilze (our athlete friend), Conor, Finn and me.  With the sleek white marble floors, roaring fireplace, and Germanic/Nordic tablemates, I made a quick mental comparison to a Swiss ski lodge.   I failed to consider the whole picture.  As we were walking out, I noticed all the tables staring at both Caren and Ilze.  For Caren, I just figured they recognized her from her ad campaigns.  For Ilze, I asked her in the parking lot…did those people know you?  She answered “No, they were all just trying to figure out what a colored girl was doing here with two beautiful white girls.  They probably thought I was the nanny.”  And do you know that my immediate thought was, “They think I’m beautiful?  Nice!!”  Only secondly did I focus on how CRAPPY that must be for Ilze, day after day, year after year.  So I guess I wasn’t so much racist as narcissistic, but at the very least – inclined to be unempathetic.  My lack of empathy is racist in and of itself.

The musical Avenue Q comes to my mind often these days.  Where cast (humans and monsters) each ultimately admit to being biased against one people group or another.  If you haven’t seen it, here are some lyrics.

Everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes

Doesn’t mean we go around committing hate crimes

Look around and you will find

No one’s really color blind

Maybe it’s a fact we should all face

Everyone makes judgments based on race.

–          Avenue Q (cast)

I have plenty of friends who will automatically deride Anglo Republicans no matter their character, tearing them apart, ironically, for being so closed minded.  (This is before even meeting them.)  And while we’re on this topic, I have loads of friends who call Catholics “cultist Pope fanatics,” and other friends who call Protestants “heretics bound for hell.”  Sheesh. 

At this wine bar earlier today, we were talking about racism.  “My horse is racist,” remarked Jill.  “At the barn, there’s this donkey.  My horse always looks down her nose at it, like ‘um, what are you??’”  Indeed, racism takes on many different forms.  Unfamiliarity engenders suspicion, while familiarity breeds contempt.  Bad run-ins, crime statistics, life experiences all breed racism.  Sitting next to a member of a certain people-group on a long international flight, and burying your nose in your sweater for 15 hours due to the smell – that alone has influenced my own prejudice.  (The people-group in question is NYC-based, FYI.) 

All this to say, before I go around attacking the South Africans, my hosts for this beautiful period of my life, I should really examine my own conscience and see where I need to change.  There are plenty of ways.  But I guess knowing is half the battle.  Some portion anyway.

Chat soon,
Liz

What I Know About Wine

What I know about wine can fit in the top of one of those mini-toothpaste tubes they give you on the airplane for overnight flights.  Oh, I’ve had my fair share of wine.  I tripped blithely through a Chardonnay phase (obligatory?) in my early 20’s – imagining Kendall Jackson Chardonnay connoted “elegance” at fraternity parties, as those nearby drank from a large trashcan filled with grain alcohol and fruit.  I drifted insecurely through a Pinot Grigio phase, the first glass ordered to signal to my date that I knew how to pronounce it.  By my 30’s, I had settled confidently into Sauvignon Blanc, with the occasional prosecco to be festive.  Not really one for red, I first experimented with Chianti (college dates at the Olive Garden), segued distractedly into a Merlot phase, (until I saw Sideways and was shamed out of it), and now rely on Pinot Noir as my red of choice.  I do pretend to like Cabernet Sauvignon to impress my husband and my dad.  Shiraz is fun to say, so sometimes I order it, despite my lack of taste for spice.  Suffice it to say, despite my years of struggling through wine choice, I’m still a wine novice.

When my best friend Elena and I traveled around the world for four months a few years ago, we had chance after chance to refine our palates.  Our carnivorous tour through Argentina alone provided ample opportunity.  A glance at our trip photos, alas, reveals our gawking at “snake wine” in Vietnam, slurping Gato Negro (a red “wine product’) out of a juice box in Peru, and a sucking a wine-vodka mix from straws out of a bucket in Thailand.  Learning had not occurred.

Another one of my best friends, Pam, lives close to Napa Valley in Northern California.  Together with our dear friend Cat, we’ve together visited vineyard upon vineyard.  But somehow my favorite Napa memory continues to be the bacon at the Carneros Inn.  (In my defense, their bacon is ridiculously delicious, as are their donuts – homemade!)  Outside of Napa, Cat, Pam and I have shared countless bottles of wine – over new relationships, breakups, new jobs, resignations, marriages, and babies.   And in those cases, perhaps it’s fitting that I remember the heart-to-hearts, rather than the wine we drank.

After a life half-lived of substandard attention to wine detail, we have settled in for the summer in one of the world’s greatest wine-producing regions.  Now in Stellenbosch, I am beginning to focus afresh.  We – Conor, our friend Jill and I – have embarked upon a Tour Of Wines.  There are about 100 wine farms (conservatively) in this region.  Breathtakingly stunning vineyards.  You can drive right onto them, park just yards from the cellar, quickly to be served a multi-glass tasting for about 30 rand, maximum. (That’s about $3.50.)  Some vineyards even pair their wines with a chocolate and/or olive tasting at the same time.  Which is – I’ll shamelessly quote Conor’s best friend Charlie here singing Yo Gabba Gabba – “A party in our tummy (so yummy, so yummy)!”

In Africa for a month now, here’s where we’ve been:  Tokara, Asara, Verlegegen, Lourensford, Beyerskloof, Fairview, Spier, Waterford, and Guardian Peak.  Each wine farm surreal, like a movie set.  Orange groves, fresh lavender, roaming mastiffs, sundrenched stone walls, bare, winter plantings still a fresh green-on-brown. In sharp contrast to our volunteer work, we wonder often if we “deserve” to be there.  We endeavor to take very little for granted here.  Each sip is well attended to, received with the gratitude one has when on a self-induced, momentary “pause” in life.

In all this sipping, here are five lessons I’ve recently learned about wine.

1)      De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum.   That is, there is no accounting for taste.  For the collector, wine may be objective, but for the drinker, wine is most definitely subjective.  Whatever you yourself like, you may safely classify as “good” wine.  My friend Michelle, a gorgeous Australia expat who owns David Family wines, told us this during a tutorial in New York a few months ago.  “Wine is meant to be enjoyed!  If you like it, then it’s good, to you.  Drink only what you like!”  So obvious, so true.  I’ve now sampled a huge array of objectively “fantastic” wines here in South Africa, yet one of my favorites has been the Vergelegen Semillon, which the vineyard reports it will soon discontinue due to its lack of sophistication.  No matter, it was the highlight of last Friday for me and I’m unapologetic.  I have years to grow in sophistication – my 40’s-80’s to enjoy heavy, complex reds.  Pour me a glass of 10-year old Cabernet Franc when I’m wearing a flowered mumu, a purple hat, and a slash of red lipstick totally outside the lines, and I’ll swirl my glass, sniff appreciatively, and comment on the complementing notes of beetroot and fiddleheaded fern, with the subtle aftertaste of Cuban cigarbox.  But I’ve got time to get there.  I’m in no hurry.

2)      Keep Trying New Wines.  The paragraph above notwithstanding, your palate won’t improve if you don’t push the envelope.  Finn loves oatmeal – LOVES it.  But every now and then I’ll sneak him some green curry or some chick pea masala.  Granted, my conniving usually backfires, and it’s messy and on occasion a bit frightening.  But only through forcing new things on Finn did find out he adores calamari and black olives.   And so it goes with wine.  The more Cabs I drink, the closer I am to actually liking them.  I can now tell a special Chenin Blanc from an average.  Comparing two Sauvignon Blancs, I find that I prefer the more dry to the more fruity.  My tastes are maturing.  (Would that it were my personality as well.)

3)      Don’t Be Embarrassed to Admit You Know Nothing.   I learn SO much more when I’m not afraid to admit I’m an idiot about wines.  No one knows me here, except that I’m a blonde American. So I have lots of leeway to admit ignorance.  I’ve asked question after question, and these gracious winemakers never hesitate to answer with great attention to detail.  We even got a long cellar tour after my 27^th question the other night.  Winemaking 101, it was awesome.  But people go to school for years to learn this stuff.  There’s a lot to learn.  And when in doubt but afraid to reveal it, Wikipedia is Your Friend.  Google doesn’t judge.

4)      Wine Paired With Food Enhances Both.  So yes, I know this one is intuitive, but aside from red with meat and white with fish, I’ve never truly paired wine deliberately with my food.  I’ve ignored how a good Sauterne can transform an already delicious seared fois gras, or how the right Pinot Gris can make the mussel soup really pop.  Many of the vineyard food menus here offer lessons on food pairing, which I’ve loved.  Dessert pairing is even more fun.  At one lesson, we had chili chocolate with a spicy Shiraz (yummy spice!), rock salt chocolate with a rich Cabernet Sauvignon (crazy delicious), and rose-flavored chocolate with a fruity desert wine (Ack!  Totally disgusting!  Why, rose flavor, why?  Mouth full of soap, so awful!)  A well chosen wine can really enhance an already great meal.  (And while it can’t save what is already terrible, enough wine can dull your taste buds. That’s why I traditionally over-pour at my dinner parties.)

5)      Use All Five Senses to Enjoy Wine.  There are always at least five ways to enjoy a good glass of wine.  The smell (flavors on the nose, anticipation of what’s to come).  The sight (clarity denoting age, color signaling flavor).  The sound (the clink of a toast, and, for us, Conor’s variety of “wine songs” – there’s a haunting Gregorian chant about Beyerskloof in heavy rotation these days).  The touch (the delicate stem of a chilled white wine glass or the warm bowl of a large red wine glass).  And the taste (obviously).  So many things to enjoy; so many reasons to slow down.

Conor and I each come from a LONG line of drinkers.  We are both Irish after all.  Our great, great, great, great grandfathers fortified our genes long ago via a long, slow pickling process.  But for us (fairly new, middle-aged parents), one glass is plenty.  We rarely finish the glass, in fact, and as it turns out we enjoy it much more that way.  So – if you’re reading this and are planning to be on the roads in Cape Town over the next month, not to worry, we’re good to drive.

(Is it left side of the road or right again?)

(Just kidding.)

Signing off to go enjoy The Soccer.  Bafana Bafana, South Africans, Bafana Bafana!!  (And tomorrow – GO USA! Beat England! Or at least don’t lose too badly!)

Chat soon,

Liz

Life in Grabouw

On Wednesday we took a trip to Grabouw.  (Pronounced “Hra-bow,” as if you’re clearing your throat).   Just over the Hottentot Holland Mountains (don’t you want to say that out loud?), Grabouw is “apple country;” a huge majority of South Africa’s export apples come of age in this verdant valley.  But we didn’t visit the apple parts.  We saw only the shanty towns. 

ThembaCare, one of the projects we work with here, provides hospice care for Grabouw.   ThembaCare’s seven-bed in-patient care center is the only one of its kind in this community.   People dying of AIDS, tuberculosis or other terminal disease come here to be cared for in their last days.  They can die here in clean, peaceful dignity. 

Seven beds.  In a community of 30,000.  In a country where the number of HIV infected is larger than in any other single country in the world.   

Conor, Jill and I left in the morning armed with a grocery bag filled with peanut butter sandwiches, our journalism-style notebooks and our “good” pens (you know, the sort of pen that you reluctantly loan to someone, but you’re watching the borrower’s every move until they hand it back to you).  We drove 40 minutes over the mountains and arrived at ThembaCare.  There we would meet the two ThembaCare careworkers who would take us with them on their rounds to visit a handful of their 450 outpatients suffering from HIV or TB.

Mandy and Sylvia, our careworker chaperones, eyed us skeptically as we walked in the training room to get our assignments.  Dressed in neat, navy blue uniforms reminiscent of my early school days at Our Lady of Good Counsel, they spoke softly to each other in Afrikaans, presumably about us.  I don’t blame them.  These ladies had to get their work done, and we could potentially be bumbling idiots for all they knew. 

We three well-meaning Americans toted with us newly composed questionnaires, inquiring about income, health, food, waste, and crime.  Three copies – one each of English, Afrikaans, and Xhosi.  (By the way, that “X” in Xhosi is pronounced by clicking your tongue, like in a National Geographic movie.  Conor spent hours…no literally…hours…trying to get it right.  Ask him, I know he’d love to do it for you.) We were hoping to poll in the shanty towns, an initial group of 40 families.  We’d aggregate the data, tweak the questionnaire, then poll another 400 families.  Armed with the overall results, we’d proceed to the head of the municipality and make a case for more badly needed municipal funding.  That’s the current plan anyway.

We drove over to the site.  A sandy, muddy stretch of land, covered with houses made of cardboard and corrugated tin.  Our car tires sunk into the mud as we parked.  It was a terrible getaway car, should an emergency erupt.  We walked along the paths between the houses, rivulets of water bridged by old rotting planks.  The tiny houses (100 square feet) were cobbled together.  Rusty nails forced through flattened bottle caps held tight ramshackle walls.  Dirty sheets hung from staples in the ceiling, separating “living rooms” from “bedrooms.”  Tiny cook stoves on top of phone books made for a functional “kitchen.”  Soccer posters and circulars made for wallpaper, brightening the grime.

As we walked from house to house, I saw Jill looking strangely at a few errant ducks – or were they ducks?  They looked dressed for Halloween, costumed with red beak-like bill and masked raccoon eyes. 

“What are those things?” asked Jill.

“A duck?  A rooster?” I said.

“A Dooster.”  Jill confirmed, as we approached the first house.

Just before walking in, we whispered to each other.  “Wait, do you guys feel like you are exactly where you are supposed to be right now in this world?”  “Yes, absolutely.” “There is no question.”  “Ok then, let’s go.” 

Our first patient was about 34 years old, but he looked twice that.  Wasted away, teeth missing, eyes bloodshot and haunted.  As the careworkers took his blood pressure and temperature, and administered love and comfort, we stood awkwardly, observing.  Conor sat down on the man’s carefully made bed, leaning in with compassion to focus on the patient. (I fell in love with Conor again, and again, this day.) 

Before asking the careworkers to translate our list of questions, we asked them to ask the man if we could pray for him.  We did this in every home, with every family.  Not a single person said no.  They each looked a bit relieved, as if to say “every little bit helps.”  Of all of the impressions that were seared into my heart that day, it was the humility of these people – allowing three white randoms to enter their very, very humble homes and pray for them.  It brings tears to my eyes now as I recall the tidying they did to make way for us, wiping down benches or fluffing pillows.    

When we left, Jill said goodbye to him, pronouncing his name correctly in Afrikaans.  I hadn’t thought to do that, I was so caught up, my mind racing through statistics.  Jill remembered each name that day.  I love that.

Because Conor, Jill and I had all met in, or through, volunteer work in poverty-stricken Nepal, we all felt pretty comfortable in those surroundings.  (That we each could spend a summer sunning on the French Riviera and return “dark beige” at our tannest, made meeting there even more peculiar.)  We made some basic comparisons in our mind, verbalizing one or two in passing. 

“Not as much trash here as in Nepal.”

“But a whole lot more disease.”

“Winter is so brutal in Nepal, thankfully we’re here and warm.”

We vacillated between spectators and tourists, drifting every so often into engaged champions of social justice.  Jill is unflappable, even-keeled, and open-hearted.  She makes everyone around her calmer, while Conor, compassionate and so very warm, makes everyone around him giggle.  We had fun walking from house to house. I loved the little ones, round and squishy, all belly, with their shy, secret smiles.  So much like Finn, just caramel versions with darker eyes.  I played the same games with the wide-eyed toddlers as I did with Finn…”Here is your…head!…ears! …belly!…knees!…feet!  Ok, where are your…..ears?  Good!!  Where are your …feet?  Yes, there they are!! Good job little sweetiepeetie!!”

Random pop culture intrusions distracted me momentarily from the mission, as strains of Justin Timberlake and Akon floated from various houses.  (Electricity is jerry-rigged, wires spliced from paying customers elsewhere.)  The ambient air swirled with smells of salty air, cooking, and ganja, redolent of any UCLA dormitory. 

At one house, while Jill was conducting the questionnaire, Conor and I sat on a sunny bench in a front “courtyard” cleared for us by a grandmother, her face coated in white cream. 

“Want to see my Japanese dog movie redubbed into English?”  Conor asked with mischief in his voice (that is to say, in his normal voice).

“Huh?”  I ask, looking around for one of the many dogs shuffling around.

He motions down, and I realize he’s putting on a shadow puppet show for me, his hands clasped together against the sunlight forming a dog “speaking in Japanese.”  Conor then “translated,” the sound following a few seconds behind the movement of the shadow dog’s mouth.  I giggle, forgetting where I am for a moment. 

When I looked up and refocused, I was stricken.  The patient in the courtyard wasn’t old, or wasted away, or vacant.  He was a tall, strong, handsome boy in his early-20’s.  He didn’t look sick.  But he had what will likely be for him a terminal illness.  His bowed head, stooped with what I believe was embarrassment, was what really moved me to tears – my only that day.  The stigma of AIDS, the poverty, the fact that we weren’t too far from his age – it was really embarrassing to him.  That visit really got to me.  I wished I could have carried that embarrassment for him that day, if nothing else. 

After a few hours our visits completed and we drove back to ThembaCare to regroup.  We gave Mandy and Sylvia our peanut butter sandwiches (“We had a big breakfast,” Conor said as he handed them over), and began the drive back down to Stellenbosch.  We decided to track down this lunch special our friend Ilze had been saying was great value for money.  

On a shaded wooden deck overlooking vines and highway, we made a sober toast (our version of a prayer at that moment) to those whom we had visited that day.  To their health, to their strength, to their households – let there be harmony, union and laughter.  To their safety, to their sense of dignity, and to the rich, comforting knowledge of a life beyond this one.  To ThembaCare.  To an increase in global health care funds.  To a cure for AIDS. 

Amen.  Cheers.  And Amen.

Chat soon,

Liz

Purpose

Why are we here?  I ask myself this several times a day. I mean this both in the broader Kierkegaardian sense, and also specifically – what I am hoping to accomplish in Africa during these two months.  This question takes me back to my early 20’s, when I found myself on a plane bound for London, England.  I was on my way to Oxford University – not as a student – but in order to follow a US Naval Academy grad with whom I was romantically involved, who was there on a prestigious scholarship.  The midshipman’s colleague happened to be on the plane as well, a polished, handsome, articulate young man by the name of Reuben.  The former Brigade Commander of the USNA (“head boy,” as they say in Harry Potter), with one year at Oxford under his belt, Reuben turned to me and said – at once both loftily and reasonably –

“So Liz, what are your goals for Oxford?” 

I gulped.  I was to be spending two years there.  One would think this answer would be quickly and enthusiastically forthcoming.   Instead, I stammered,

“Well, I guess I want to make sure I find the right bus from Heathrow to Gloucester Green.  I think all the signs will be in English though?” 

Despite the fact that I had just been hired as a consultant by British Aerospace, and thus at least had a set of purported work goals (such as “don’t get fired”), I not only had no answer, but I panicked at my lack thereof. Honestly, I had no idea.  I was really only focused on getting there in one piece.   

Now (considerably) older, I do give international moves more thought.  Conor and I had a few goals in coming to Africa, some joint, some individual.  My primary individual goal was this:  “Hearing from God.”  Not because I’m super spiritual (because I am neither holy nor roller).  But because I had grown quite deaf.  In both ears.

Most of you folks reading this know that I believe firmly in God.  I believe He is real, and I believe He is personal.  At times in my life, I have felt that God is more real than anything around me.  (How I’ve loved those times!)  At other times however, like over the past two years, I have felt so distant from Him that at times I question whether my faith is just me being “duped.”  Christians would call the phase I’m in “the desert,” or “the valley.”  Like “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” (lyrics you might recall from that rap song from the Michelle Pfeiffer movie, Dangerous Minds, with the gang bangers who finally get A’s and write poignant essays).

Africa, selfishly, was a means to go close to where God is working.  (Because don’t we all sort of think that God hangs out a lot in Africa, caring for all the “starving children”?)  To go close, and then to get to chat with Him.  Here’s what I wanted to ask Him:

“What am I supposed to be doing with my life, if I don’t want to be a partner at a law firm?”

“What is it that will make me feel fulfilled, professionally, and how the heck do I balance that with raising a toddler and being a good mom?”

“What do you do when you get closer to 40 than to 30, and you’re wearing more jeans and button downs, and less mini-dresses and leggings, and you go to brunch on the Lower East Side and feel so out of place that you want to cry and wonder if you’ve been permanently relegated to Murray Hill?”

“Why is the Bible the heaviest book in the world to pick up sometimes?”

“Why do so many New Yorkers that I meet think that Christians (on the whole) are less thoughtful, more close-minded, Sarah Palin supporters who can’t name a single periodical?”

Also, I wanted to have my heart changed.  I’m so weary of comparing myself in angst to the other mothers in my son’s music class.  (The former ballerina with the gargantuan diamonds and the permanently on-call car and driver.  The beautiful blonde wife of a hedge fund owner who wore only Hermės.)  I didn’t want to measure my success by how many all-nighters I had pulled that month, or how close I was getting to becoming a true “deal jockey.” 

And lastly (but admittedly far down the list), I wanted to, you know, help people.    

We’ve been here for almost two weeks now.  As far as I can tell, I have heard only two things from God.   I’m sure that God is speaking –through these Graceland preschoolers, through stunning creation, through Finn’s first soccer ball kicks (yeah!!!!).  But I’m very dense.  So only two things seem clear.   

Number One:  I heard God respond to a very selfish but earnest prayer, in which I laid out all of the things I was hoping for:  an amazing, challenging job with funny and interesting colleagues, but one with good hours so I can also see my family, a big house in Connecticut, with a fireplace and a huge yard where Emma could run, and the ability to develop a strong sense of “home” and “community.” 

God’s answer (I think, that is, I’m never 100% sure) was simply,

“I’m providing for you now.”

So… Right.  Ok.  Shoot.  He’s right.  Our lives are so amazing right now!  And He does ask us to pray for our “daily” bread.  So I felt a bit chagrined, but also a bit peaceful.  I’m “chilled” as the South Africans would say.  Those things may or may not come to pass, but we are definitely provided for today.

Number Two:  The second thing I’ve heard from God (again, I think), comes from a Jon Foreman song about God.  (He’s the super cute lead singer of Switchfoot – a band from my home town San Diego – and  he’s also a strong Christian.)  One line from one of his songs goes like this:

“Two things You’ve told me:  that You are strong, and that You love me.”

And that line has just struck me.  Over and over, since I’ve been there.   I really like the way that leaves me…feeling protected here.  I take that line to be from God as well.  Simply that – He is strong and loving.

Tomorrow morning Conor, Jillian and I will join a Thembalitsha care worker, walking through the slums in a community called Grabouw.  We are tasked with gathering data about community health, income, chronic or terminal diseases (which many/most have), and crime, for the municipality.  Ultimately, we hope this data will serve as a benchmark for future, increased funding for the community.

We’re packing sandwiches for the day now.  Our daily bread (and peanut butter).  Just enough for the day.  

I should also have said, I’m trying to listen, as well as hear, too.

Chat soon,

Liz

Two Saturday Mornings

This morning I woke up and realized that I was meant to be at a tea party in less than an hour. The tea party was being hosted by Nicola, the sister-in-law of my sweet friend Caren. I hadn’t yet met Nicola, but I knew Caren to be a stunning former model. The last time I was in South Africa, in fact, Caren’s picture was plastered on billboard advertisements for miles. Also, Caren is always impeccably dressed. I, at that moment, had full-fledged bed-head, was wearing mismatched pajamas, and within minutes of rising, I was covered in Skippy-Peanut-Buttered-handprints, courtesy of Monsieur Finn.

I sleepwalked toward a cup of chai and began to Google directions to the venue, Nicola’s newly opened bakery, La Fête. At the same time, our friend Ilze came downstairs (she’s staying with us for a few weeks), the sound of her bike cleats clicking virtuously against the stone floor. Ilze, adorned in a sleek biking outfit, began to fill her Camelpack backpack with water. She tossed her bike helmet to Finn as he stared, jaw agape at his aerodynamic new toy. Conor and I gave each other the “aren’t we so lazy??” look, before I returned to my computer, and Conor to his Cheerios.

“You sure you won’t go to Caren’s tea party Ilze? It’ll be fun…” I asked. (Ilze and Caren were close friends; I had met Caren through Ilze a few years back.)

“No, it’s all you,” she said, “that’s not really my cup of tea….heh. Plus, I really can’t wait to get outside for this ride – look at this day, sho.”

“Ok, have a great workout! Um…pedal hard!” I said, trying to be encouraging. Thinking, better her than me, and how comfortable our dining room chairs were.

Ilze left with a confident farewell. Ilze is a remarkable athlete. She played professional netball – it’s like women’s basketball – both at university, and then for the Western Cape’s team. Ilz is young, 26, and she would describe herself as “colored.” I know this term sounds strange to Americans, but during Apartheid in South Africa, people were grouped by color. “Whites,” “blacks,” and “coloreds” being the three main categories. Even though Apartheid was dismantled in the mid-1990’s, some terminology, and much of the de facto segregation, has stuck. Ilze and I have had long chats over the years about what her being “colored” has meant for her in her life, has meant for her family. I imagine you’ll see strains of those conversations in my writing to come.

After sending Ilze and her bike off for the morning, “white,” unenergetic me then pulled together the best outfit I could think of, choosing from the strange array of layers you pack when “volunteering in Africa.” I threw on a stack of gold bangles at the last minute, trying to liven up jeans and flats. Emboldened with fulsome directions and a very heavy 1996 Mercedes sedan we have rented for the summer, I set out to join the Stellenbosch “Ladies who Lunch.”

I arrived to see two very stylish dresses walking towards a very pink bakery. I say I saw the dresses, because (a) they were two of the prettiest dresses I’d ever seen, and (b) I was wearing dusty, well-traveled jeans and a hat from H&M. I immediately felt self-conscious. When I walked in, I saw my friend Caren. A standing, breathing Ralph Lauren ad in her riding boots and cropped velvet blazer, Caren is a pale, aristocratic brunette beauty with a delicate, lilting English accent. Within minutes I had met a group of her friends, and I heard myself telling a story – out of nowhere, mind you – in my flat American accent about how our macaroni and cheese in the States has fluorescent orange powder, whereas the macaroni and cheese in South Africa has actual cheese in it, and how delicious! Just like that, I was the random, loud tourist. I won’t say I didn’t fit in, I was actually loving every minute of it and did feel at home. I just felt so….American. A pink plastic flamingo in a garden of floral dresses with beautiful accents. (They spoke English instead of their native Afrikaans to be polite to me.)

The interior of La Fête looked a cross between a lovely high-end lingerie store and a furnished English garden. The walls had a lovely subtle leaf print, with pink accents and lovely crystal chandeliers. Pastel armoires lined the walls, accessorized by dozens of small teapots and china dishes of multicolored macaroons. I believe I heard Nicola, the owner of the bakery, before I actually saw her. Her voice emanating straight from of a 1950’s Disney movie. I still can’t decide if it was more fairy or more princess. It was the kind of voice that would beckon bluebirds to alight on shoulders, squirrels and fawn to gather at feet. Nicola was a petite brunette, wearing a dark blue sweater the same color as her eyes, a hot pink bubble skirt, and brightly colored floral-patterned tights, the ensemble attractive largely because she is a size zero, at best. The entrepreneurial fairy princess poured me a cup of strawberries and cream tea (was it magic, I thought?), and asked which cookies I would like to try…sighing that La Durėe in Paris was her macaroon muse. All of this came out like a sort of song, as if a follow-on trill of “la la la la la,” would have sounded completely in keeping with her conversation. I was fascinated, and tried to do what I could to encourage her to say just a few more sentences.

Over those few hours, I had a truly lovely, sugar-saturated time at tea with the ladies. It was, as my mother would say, “very civilized.” I exchanged numbers with a few ladies, for play dates or afternoon tea in the weeks to come.

Returning home, half-eaten macaroons wrapped up in a pink lacy doily, I learned from a pale, distraught Conor what had happened to Ilze in the meantime. (She has given me permission to share this story.) While I was sipping tea, Ilze and her friend Nadine had charted their biking course from Stellenbosch to Paarl and back, a journey about 80 kilometers. At the crest of one of the many hills, they reached one of the poorer, rougher neighborhoods in the area. Coasting slowly into the shoulder of the road, Ilze prepared to descend the hill, only about a third of the way through her ride. That is, however, until two men jumped out of the bushes nearby, one violently grabbing at Ilze’s backpack. Cleats attached to the pedals, Ilze was stuck to her bike and unable to run. Undaunted, the man continued to attack, knocking her off her bike while trying to rip off her bag. Ilze – tough, spunky gal that she is, swung a heavy punch which landed squarely on his face. Enraged, the attacker threw down, pulled her into the bushes, and began to beat her, punching her in the face until she was huddled into a ball.

Her friend Nadine had seen that this maniac’s friend had a knife, so she (wisely) ran to the center of the road to flag down drivers to help them. She screamed to Ilze “he’s got a knife!!” just as the second man sliced his arm down, his knife swiping the air just an inch away from Ilze’s face. Ilze screamed in Afrikaans “Please, no!! You don’t want to do this!!” At which the man suddenly stopped, then ran off to follow his friend, who had already grabbed Ilze’s bike and phone and run off, over the fence. Disappeared.

A police car which had driven by randomly saw Nadine gesturing crazily and stopped. Upon hearing her quick recount of the attack, they sprang immediately into action. A bleeding Ilze, covered in scratches and bruises, a shiner on her eye where the fist had impacted, limped to the car to describe her attackers.

I found Ilze at home, sitting in our upstairs lounge, looking small and sad. She was writing to her friend, the one from whom she had borrowed the bike, trying to find out if it was insured. In keeping with our Ilze’s strong faith, she was saying how blessed they were that it was she who was attacked, not Nadine, as Nadine and her husband were riding in a marathon bike race later this month. And, despite his retaliation, Ilze was very proud to have landed such a strong punch to the face of her attacker.

The day did redeem itself for Ilze, and continued to be beautiful for us. After her justifiably marathon shower, we convinced Ilze to come out with us to Fairview Wine Estate. There we met up with friends, ate ten kinds of cheese and a duck liver pate, and washed it all down with a dry, crisp Chenin Blanc. After ordering one last round of Roydon cheese, Ilze casually mentioned that her mom wanted her to see a doctor.

“But I told my mom, it’s ok, you see, because my hand wasn’t bleeding after I hit him. My blood didn’t touch his blood. It’s fine.”

And my stomach sank, as I realized what I had forgotten to process. How quickly and easily Ilze could have picked up AIDS this morning.

So anyway, those were our two Saturday mornings.

I know, right?

Chat soon,

Liz

p.s. Yes family, we’re being very careful, we promise. And we’re taking good care of Ilz.

Thoughts on Preschool

Blog.  Bloggy blog.  Bloooogggy blog blog blog.  Blogging is funny.  It’s a bit like writing in your journal, and also like writing to your best friend.  But also just like a reaaaallly long status update.  Don’t bloggers feel self-conscious?  Like making a series of faces in the mirror, knowing all the while that they are  videotaping themselves?  Who would watch that later?

I know my husband, who is a brilliant writer, gets self-conscious.  He’ll say to me, nonchalantly, “Oh, so I posted a blog. Whatever, if you have time to read it, that’s cool, whatever.”  A few seconds pass. “I mean, if you wanted to read it now or whatever, that’s cool I guess.”  No need for him to convince me, I blast over to my computer, ready to laugh.  True to form, each and every hilarious blog entry has me longing for him to begin his next posting.  After a handful of very genuine superlative words of praise, Conor then follows me around the house (trailed by Finn and our dog Emma), saying things like “Did you think it was funny?  Would you say sort of funny or really funny?  On a scale of 1-10, would you call it an 11, do you think?  Maybe a 12?  Which parts did you think were the funniest?  All of them?”  Sweet Conor.  So brilliant, yet of course not sure of himself.  I totally get it.  Unless you’re writing something dry, like a joint venture teaming agreement say, it’s rather hard to read your work.  Or see yourself on video. Or look at a picture of yourself that those characiturists draw, where (for me anyway), your cheeks look like those of a chipmunk and you have a very large forehead. Why do we pay money for those things?

It’s Thursday here, and the cold weather has set in. We’re sitting at a “cool” café in a neighborhood that reminds me wonderfully of Palermo Viejo in Buenos Aires.  Our server looks like a young Claudia Schiffer, and a Zero 7 track is battling the espresso machine for airtime.  The air smells of cocoa-topped lattes, and a soft mingling of perfume and cologne.  I can safely call it cool, because loads of students from the University of Stellenbosch are here too, drinking coffee and large glasses of wine (that incidentally cost $2).  The students are unusually tall, with Germanic/Nordic features and build, and they are very, very good-looking. (Much like the Argentines and the Ethiopians, the Koreans, and don’t even get me started on the Swedish…can someone explain that to me? How are these whole countries all so good-looking??)  And so go the South Africans – great genes.  They’re mostly speaking Afrikaans (sounds very much like Dutch), but I already know they are waxing theoretical on philosophy and existentialism and Ke$ha’s latest music lyrics and such.  Because that’s what college kids do, and it’s cool!

Today is our “break” day of sorts.  Earlier this week we toured three of the projects in which we’ll be working.  Tuesday was a visit to Graceland Preschool.  To describe Graceland, first I have to let you in on a few things influencing my worldview.

In New York, we live two blocks away from Ralph Lauren’s penthouse.  (He’s at 92^nd and 5^th, in case you want to do a drive by…I saw him once and swooned a bit – so tan!!)  We also live four blocks away from the John H. Holmes Tower, a dreary high-rise New York City Housing Authority Project, at 92^nd and 1^st.  There we were, smack dab between the two – the extraordinary wealth and the urban poor.

And here we are, in the same spot.  The Western Cape is a province, like a state, in South Africa that includes both Cape Town and all of the gorgeous winelands surrounding us.  The Western Cape is very similar to New York in that it is home to some extraordinarily wealthy “gentleman farmers,” as well as home to a great many farm workers, both local and migrant, who live on the farmers’ properties with their extended families.

Speaking generally (from what I’ve learned), many of the farm workers are 4th and 5th generation alcoholics who, up until the 1990’s, were often paid their Friday wages in part with bin wine or reject wine. The children of these farm workers are often victims of abuse, especially after weekend drinking binges by their parents.  Supposedly, come Friday afternoons, the valley is often filled with staggering drunks walking home after receiving their pay and immediately seeking an alcoholic fix.  An overlarge handful of Graceland Preschool’s children have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and vestiges of other avoidable childhood diseases.  And really runny noses too, but I believe that’s universal.

Jumping back to New York, we also live a few doors down from the famed “92^nd Street Y Preschool.” For those outside of neurotic New York, the 92^nd Street Y Preschool is widely touted as “a launching pad into the Ivy League.”  Speaking literally, the preschool is statistically harder to get into than Harvard.   Chauffeured limousines, Range Rovers and town cars drop tubby little Bonpoint-clad toddlers off there every morning, and collect them each afternoon.  A multimillionaire Wall Street baron was even alleged to have given a favorable rating to AT&T stock in exchange for his twin toddlers’ acceptance into the Y’s preschool. The illegally eager father then arranged for Citigroup to donate $1 million to the preschool, to build further favor for his tots.  (After prosecution, New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer banned the guy for life from the securities industry and ordered Citigroup to pay a $15 million fine.)  But anyway, shows the length wealthy parents will go to, to secure their child’s place in this posh prep/preschool.  Tuition at the 92^nd Street Y hovers around $15,000 per year.

At Graceland, on the other hand, parents or caregivers sometimes forget to pick up their children at the end of the day.  The children are only fed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, due to budget constraints.  School fees at Graceland are about 900 SA Rand per month (about $110 per year), but Elizabeth Solomons, the Principal, will waive it if she knows the families have no money to give.

We took Finn with us to Graceland on Tuesday, as the pictures I’ll post next blog will attest.  Both Finn and the Gracelanders looked at each other curiously at first, then within seconds they all tumbled together into a hodgepodge  game of “grab-the-truck-quickly-dive-then-get-as-much-sand-in-your-hair-as-possible.”  These kids, for me, were very easy to love on.  They looked so sweet and so healthy, all dressed in vibrant pinks and oranges.  Chattering away in slow, loud Afrikaans, calling Finn a “ba ba” (baby in Afrikaans), they danced around shyly, waiting to get picked up.  Elizabeth, the Principal – a thinner version of Halle Berry, with translucently glowing skin – began to chat to me about the kids’ history, then, sitting down to get traction, moved onto her own history.  No less than an hour and a half later, her own 3-year-old interrupted her fascinating soliloquy about poverty and determination with a cry to play with her cell phone.  (Finn is mesmerized by my Blackberry…it’s like the Promised Land to him.  I give it to him, with a wincing Conor looking on, and call it “special treat,” buying myself six minutes to put on makeup in the mornings.)  I pledged to record Elizabeth’s story,and I’ll cover it herein sometime soon.

We left on Tuesday with a promise to return weekly to the project site, tasked with recording the histories of the children so we can present their stories to the world.

Yes, I know the written contrast between rich and poor has been done, redone, and done again.  Conor and I have seen it for years, in Nepal and in our own lives personally.  But this is what we’re experiencing right now, so this is what I’ll document.  We will have this weekend free (vineyard exploration ahoy!), then we’ll start up again with volunteering early next week.  By then, our great friend Jillian, a writer for the New York Times, tall and blonde, begging comparison to Gwyneth Paltrow, will come to volunteer with us for a few weeks (or a month, if she ends up covering the World Cup for the Times).  Jill herself is an adult orphan, remarkably introspective and compassionate.  She’ll fall in love several times over in this place, I’m sure of it.

To be honest, my feelings about being here in South Africa range from “I can’t believe I quit my high paying job to do this; am I a total idiot? And will I ever get a lucrative job again?” to “I can’t believe I almost cancelled this amazing, life-changing trip.  This is the absolute, best thing I could be doing in my life right now, there is no question.”  I imagine my feelings will continue to be all over the map.  As is my prerogative, as a woman.

To close, I’ll quote one of my favorite singers who puts it so plainly.

“Life has no limit, if you’re not afraid to get in it.”  Mason Jennings.

Totally.

Chat soon,

Liz

Is it Summer? Or Winter?

If it’s Summer in America, and I’m an American spending my Summer in South Africa, where purportedly it’s Winter, does that make this Summer or Winter for me?  I understand that it’s Summer for Americans in America, and Winter for South Africans in South Africa, that’s all clear to me.  But what of an American on “Summer Holiday” during “Winter”?  It’s still Summer for me, right??  This semi-ridiculous argument goes on at our dinner table every night, in large part because we’ve been blessed to eat most nights so far with some very lovely but stubborn South Africans.  Needless to say, the South Africans demand that we acknowledge that it’s our Winter too.  That’s when I pretend not to hear them when they ask if I’ll pass the sausage and peppers.  Show them.

So to back up a bit, in short, Conor graduated from NYU Stern a few weeks ago, and I resigned from my law firm at the same time, and we picked up and moved us and our wee son Finn down with us to Stellenbosch to volunteer for the Summer.  (See what I did there?)  Stellenbosch is to Cape Town as Napa is to San Francisco.  If there’s a more beautiful place on Earth, I haven’t seen it.  We are volunteering with an umbrella organization called Thembalitsha (which means “new hope” in a local language called isiXhosa, pronounced “Kosa”).  Check out Thembalitsha when you have a moment.  http://www.thembalitsha.org.za/  Amazing stuff going on.

Since we only started volunteering today, I won’t go into broad details about the beautiful people, the need, the poverty, the HIV, and all associated challenges.  I have no real context, one day on the job.  So I’ll give those updates a bit later.  I will say that our adopted sister Ilze shared her Beyerskloof 2003 Pinotage (which she received for her birthday last year) with us tonight, and it was stunning.  Does that sound pretentious when you call wine stunning?  Like when British people call food gorgeous?  I never understood that.  Daniel Craig is gorgeous.  A nice mutton curry (or some other British fare) is also gorgeous??  Really??

We are living in this ridiculously beautiful house on a golf course on a vineyard.  That reminds me, in concept anyway, of turducken.  (A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.)  Our blessings seem almost too much at times, like the corner piece of a buttercream-frosted cake.  But we have little Finn, whom we want to keep safe, and our amazing friends Jillian, Tim and Debbi each coming to stay with us for a while, so we needed the space.  Also, our friend Ilze, with a discerning eye, a great business sense, and an ability to turn anyone into an instant best friend, found this place for us, and who are we to argue with a stubborn South African?  (Ignore prior paragraphs.) 

So here we sit, the last remains of the Pinotage in front of us, patio doors wide open, while in rushes the sort of night air that smells like all the best Autumn holidays put together.  A wood burning stove is warming our room here, while a fountain outside on the patio reminds me of California.  In the distant night sky, we can see mountains towering, with purple, green and gold winelands as far as the eye can see.  Oh, and one of Finn’s neon balls in the backyard, the perfect accent piece.

Tomorrow we’ll dig in again, and I’ll work on gathering pictures and stories.  I hope to post every few days, shadowed largely by my brilliant writer of a husband, who will also be blogging.  (NB: Conor’s blog will be, as always, extraordinarily entertaining, while mine…well… my Mom has promised to read it, and likely my friend Elena too, thanks E!!).  I mean this next bit in the least cliche way possible – I wish you all were here with us.  Please consider a visit.

Chat soon,

Liz