Groundhog Day

I haven't written a blog in 3 months. I felt like when my "travels" stopped being "travels" and I was making myself at home in Salima, I just couldn't blog. It didn't feel right. I mean, I wouldn't be blogging in New York about my day, this had been a journey blog. I guess I don't know how I feel about it. There are certainly things that I could have and maybe should have shared here, but I also feel like there are things/experiences that are just for me.

Today feels like the first different day in 3 months. (it's a bold statement, but something is definitely different today in a larger sense) I fly to India today, the traveling journey continues. This is for all of us. The inner journey has never stopped. I promise I'll give you some, but I also need to keep some for myself. Home is where your soul is. Journey on.

Morning at the wards

I know my own writing by now. I've never purported to be a writer or have gone to school for writing or anything like that. (this first sentence is evidence of that) Still, I know my writing. I've read blogs that I've written in the past and even as short as a few weeks ago there was this light hearted silver lining to the post that I'd be basically spoon feeding the reader. Keep in mind that's a completely one sided view of the blog and there are many other facets to these stories.

I had a conversation with friends yesterday about the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. Easily one of my favorite actors, and I would say that the movie although not one of my favorites of all time, was a great film. Friends here disagreed saying that some of the imagery was too forced. (Him being at a crossroads in life while standing literally at the cross of roads, the whale coming up to his raft and guiding him almost to safety)...I hadn't thought about it like that and I quite enjoyed those parts of the movie. So, I chalked it up to different strokes for different folks. Something that was a directorial choice that may or may not have been bantered with and that made it into the film. End of conversation.

How does that tie into this blog entry. I've just returned from the wards and although I recognize my writing style, something within me is continually changing when writing about that experience. It's unending rooms of sick children, mothers on the floor with infants, TB, HIV, a constant background noise of screams and the scent of urine mixed with rubbing alcohol, make it very difficult for me to have my typical "GI Joe, one to grow on" lesson/suggestion at the end of the blog. Maybe it's there, maybe it's not today. Maybe you the reader will be able to pull something out of this post, or I may be able to pull something out of my experience later, but right now other than applauding my friends Eric and Tammy, (the physicians who I followed today) that type of entry is very obviously lacking for me today. I just walked through 3 hours of pain. I was able to share a few smiles with some children, was offered lunch by one of the mothers, but basically suffering. There does not seem to be an end to the battle. I watched Eric attempt to drain the lungs of an 18 month old girl who's been in pain. Then we watched as one patient who's been in the ICU was struggling to breathe. You could see his abdomen and other muscles working overtime to try to get and keep air in. He's 3 months old. We didn't even get a chance to see Stella today. Stella had abdominal surgery and her wounds have become infected making it impossible for her to eat solid food. She's extremely malnourished. I haven't seen too much in the way of a hopeful situation, and numerous times had to choke down waves of emotion that are always there beneath the surface.

I've been very quite here. Friends and family who know me from home will say huh? Adam, quiet, he's usually very upbeat and outgoing. I don't feel that way. It feels really comfortable to be quiet here during this time. A girl who's just met me, told me last night, I've noticed that you're really good with the one on one conversation but that you tend to become quiet around large groups. Talk about a different view of how I saw myself and how others I feel have seen me in the past. Coming from being a young guy and the life of the party, (activity wise, there are other types of ways to be the life of the party) to now being seen as someone who's the quiet guy at the party. And to be honest, it feels really comfortable to me. Like I've always been this person on some level. Like the vision of me as the old guy in the rocking chair, (a visual that I've had of myself since I was a kid) was becoming a little clearer. I've had moments like this in the past but this is the first time I feel like it's lined up with how others are perceiving me and how I actually feel at the time. I do feel quiet. It feels like all those years when I would have bouts with a down day or a depressed mood and I wanted to be quiet,I'd say to myself..."alright you can be this way for a little bit but pretty soon it will be time to perk up again"...I thought "up" was where the happiness was.

I read a great article about a study that was done about happiness, vibrations and the ability to feel happiness. In short, most people assumed that someone who's upbeat, shows their emotions outwardly and looks happy or vibrates on a higher frequency has a much greater capacity to feel joy than someone who vibrates at a lower level. Because there are just people right, who vibrate at different frequencies. Some are high energy and outgoing, others are more internal and vibrating at a slower, lower energy. For happiness, the thought was faster, up was better, more chances at happiness. Well, anyway, the study basically found that there was no difference in how much happiness one could feel or experience regardless of whether or not they seemed to show classic signals of a "happy" person. That someone who was quiet and internalized a lot could experience happiness just as much as someone who was laughing, jumping for joy. Essentially no difference.

See, I was just going to continue to write another paragraph right there and tie up this post with some Adamisms and my personal slant. In other words, tie up this post with some nice ribbons, make it look pretty, happy and then think that I've really done all that I could do for you the reader to get something out of this post. And even writing this explanation I still kind of feel like I'm spoon feeding you to gleam something out of this post. Regardless, that's in my nature and I feel it will always be there which is a very good thing. No matter if I'm up, down, left, right....The only way to stop then is to stop. Stop.

Do This! Part 2

one addition to the previous post. If you're truly averse to that song and it's just not doing it for you, pick a different one.

Today is a day off of work in Lilongwe. (which seems to happen quite a bit) Today is "Banda Day" which is in celebration of Malawi's first president Kamuzu Banda. I'm jumping in with a few friends to go sailing today. First time since I think my age was in single digits...

Do This!

Either now or when you get home, Itunes, Ipod, YouTube, CDplayer, whatever...put on John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change"....but Adam I know this song, it's old, I've heard it already, must I? Yes, you must...I'm going to get out of the way on this one and give simple instructions

1-Put song on

2-Smile

3-See...where...it...goes...keep smiling. (even if you have to force it)

Things don't get played out, we just need new things to play in...So when something that's out is always in...it's classic...

Dead Dog, Chickens for Sale, Peoples

Riding my bike home from a brunch, these thoughts run through my head..."I know I make a left on this street right here. Ok, how far down to I go?....ah, yes, there's the dead dog in the road that I passed this morning so I know it's still a little bit further...right now I remember passing the Area 12 police station so I'm still on the right road, but when do I turn right...hmmm...oh good, there it is the chickens for sale sign, I remember I saw that head on this morning before making a left so that means go right here. Great. Now all I have to do is go up the hill, pass the "Peoples" (that's the name) supermarket on my right and the place that I'm staying has the HUGE satellite dish in the front yard on the right.

Today was my first day riding a bike that I'm borrowing around Lilongwe. I have a good idea of where I'm going most of the time, but usually other people are driving so the directions inherently aren't sticking the same way they would be if I was driving all the time...

Anyway, needless to say I made it home and all is well. It did get me thinking though about finding our way back home and the signs that we follow. In a strictly geographic sense, first there was the leaving of breadcrumbs, the noticing of landmarks, setting up of street signs, and now GPS tracking and Google maps so we'll almost never get lost. It's very efficient. We don't like to get lost. Now that I've made it home today the mystery of the route that I traveled is pretty much gone. What I'm noticing though is that "getting lost" was kind of fun. And truthfully, I didn't even get lost. I just felt like I didn't know where I was for a moment and that much felt like an adventure. Small things. Trust me, I don't originally come from this school of thought. I historically like to know where I'm going, what time I'm leaving, will return, what mode of transport I'm taking. I'm chronically early for things. I'm an American a New Yorker and I'm thrilled to have this work ethic installed within me. I mean after all, (Dad you'll appreciate this) when I was a kid and my father asked me what train I would take into the city, I would say "oh I don't know a 730ish train?..." His response would be, "Well which one? There's a 7:30, 7:38 and a 7:42 that's express so it makes 3 more stops after ours and then directly into the city skipping Jamaica (yeah!!!), saving about 20 minutes." Just fantastic. But I'm not catching a LIRR train today. I was going home from Sunday brunch...getting lost seemed like the right way to get to get home today.

When we move away from our center and adventurously expand ourselves remember that there's always "home"...We all have our own unique version and our own ways of getting there. This was mine today, tomorrow it will change. I guarantee it.

Yesterday and Today

There are really sick children here. I think I first got here and everything was so new, so overwhelming, that I just kind of put "sick children" in it's neat little box to revisit another day. Yesterday was that day. I've read stories with some of the kids, made them laugh but that was away from the wards. Away from the place where they spend the bulk of their time. Yesterday I visited them in their area. There were no doctors on the floor. I took it upon myself to walk through and see what was going on. From wall to wall hospital beds filled with children in various stages of infection and disease. Let me restate the number that I mentioned in a blog the other day...around 150 children die every month here at an average hospital, that's 4 or 5 a day. That's unreal. That's unimaginable by US standards where 2 die a month and 1 case of swine flu gets national media exposure...Before yesterday that was just a number. Yesterday I saw that I will most likely lose the children that I've gotten to know and play with. Their mothers and fathers will lose them as well. It just hit me yesterday. There's one young boy who had a great time during story time. He was a latecomer so I didn't get his name. He has one eye that is removed from having a cyst on his eyeball I believe. He likes to smile. The other day during story time I saw him having fun, jumping into games and everyone was having a great time. I felt like I was back teaching at the Public Theater in NYC. Just young kids coming in to learn and play. Everyone would participate fully and there was never a huge concern on my part whether or not those children would be safe and healthy in the near future. It was kind of a given. I think in my mind out of just sheer repetition kind of convinced itself that that was the situation here as well. That's not the situation here. The odds are that this boy will die. A lot of the children here that I've had the chance to meet will most likely die. It's so insanely sad that I find it difficult to even be in the building right now. As tears well up in my eyes I know I have to choke them down because the last place you want to have a sad atmosphere is in the waiting room, offices, hospital wards of a pediatric HIV clinic. The ongoing cry of babies that when I first got here I think I must have blocked out, now come screaming through my chest and grab hold of my heart...I was one of these children actually. My heart, soul and all the memories that I never knew I had are coming up. For those of you who don't know, (mainly all of you reading this will have some idea) I had a brain abscess when I was 8 years old which prompted me to have seizures for a little while. I spent the better part of 3 months at North Shore Hospital on Long Island. I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and that I had 2 months to live. Needless to say I did not die. I grew up strong, it was only an abscess. I took medication and it shrunk. I remained on medication for over a year to prevent further seizures. I was lucky, for whatever reason that wasn't my time. I'm very lucky. I've had the chance to experience, love, travel, laugh, cry for an extra 25 years. Most of these children will never get to do that. They will be robbed of the opportunity to get an education, to have a family of their own, to fall in love. I say this with tears streaming down my face in an empty conference room. The life expectancy here in Malawi is 39 years old. I need to get myself together before my meeting, but what do you do with that. When the initial shock and awe of being in Africa wears off and you start really getting to the work of helping Malawians help themselves, how do you start? Where do I begin? This is my experience so far in Africa. Some days are great...I play with the kids, go on Safari, get to research GIS mapping systems and help with the hospital budget...and then there are days like yesterday and today. Where when every smile I try to illicit from my young friend with one eye just doesn't work. He knows that I'm trying to make him laugh and I think he gives me a few courtesy laughs to make me feel good, but something has changed. There's something profoundly sad about today. There's no story time, and he seems resigned to his fate. I try to leave smiling with my head held high and my spirits together like this is just another day here at the hospital and everything is going to be alright. That "hey I'll see you soon, are you feeling ok"...I may not see him soon and he's just not feeling ok. I had nothing to say when I left my young friend yesterday and I look forward to seeing him tomorrow when I make the rounds with Eric. I had this very real experience today after I wrote yesterday of giving acknowledgement to all of a personality to make it whole. This is closer to the whole experience of Africa. Safari was great, part of Africa. Soccer practice last week with a bunch of teenagers, part of Africa. And knowing that 150 children a month that pass through this hospital will die of HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Cancer, respiratory failure, a very real and large part of Africa. It's something that I don't like to speak of that often because it had been uncomfortable and it's just sad. Sad though is part of life and if this is "Journey On...Traveling with Adam" it will not simply be a tourist guide to Africa, India and Europe, it will be all of me, all of what I experience. Sad, happy, fun, fast, slow, frustrating, loveless, loving...That's completely real, that's completely all I can ask of myself and will I know fuel me to do the best I can to help out here in any way to take away some of the pain from these children, the doctors, staff and even myself...

TIA...This...is...Africa

So the truck is completely open. There's nothing between myself and wildlife. Warthogs come to the door, I place my camera right at his snout..Giraffes, Elephants, Hippos, walk right past me in this open truck. The weather is beautiful...We start driving fast and it's obvious that we're headed somewhere important, something to see, one of the big 5 maybe...(Elephant, Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Buffalo)..."Two male lions ahead, 100 meters, stay seated please, no sudden movements"...This is one time that bucking the system and marching to the tune of my own drummer will take a backseat to the king of the jungle...50 meters, I have my headphones in attached to my camcorder, ready to film...25 meters and I can really see the outline of two males lying in the middle of the road with another vehicle parked 3 meters away...I said to myself as we were approaching, "huh, they don't look large, not that impressive, they're lying in the middle of the road, not moving, where's the action"

We pulled up, 3 meters away, two male lions, one lying down with his head buried, the other with his head and chest up but facing away from us. I looked away from the camera for a second to see if I could connect with the lion..perhaps he would turn around and I'd get to see what he loo....ok, he's turning now...and with a sudden movement he looked me right in the eye. As if he knew the instant my attention turned to him. He turned, we locked eyes, and he shifted slightly and that's all it took...Goose bumps all over my body, my heart jumped out of my chest, and I froze. All he had to do was jump. There was nothing between us. I froze. This is why he is the King of the Jungle. Once I got past the initial heart pounding excitement of locking eyes with him I realized that one look was all it took. In our contemporary world of excitement, Xgames, massive displays of commercial affection, stimulation, Grande Fraps, and larger than life yet FAT FREE muffins, (not possible I tell you) I loved that this animal turned something on inside of me that I'm always looking for with a look. That feeling of being alive. Somewhere between danger, lust and stability. Somewhere between having my feet on the ground and my heart in my throat I realize that life in all it's mistakes, imperfections, disease, death, poverty, can provide me with a moment like this. Whom can I provide this moment for? Others should have this moment...I want to have this moment over and over again. Sustainable heart pounding stability. What!? Is that possible? Kind of sounds like an oxy moron a bit huh...

I was asked this week by a friend who I've been emailing how all of these things I'm exploring, asking about relate to a family, 5 year plan, next steps. She actually seemed threatened by the fact that I seem to constantly be contradicting myself, and that she wanted to know what I was really feeling...Maybe I am contradicting myself but maybe it's because their are parts of ourselves that are contradictory. Conflict and resolution within ourselves about our own journey. What lights us up, what turns us on, what brings in the dark, is the dark bad, or is it just dark?
Why is light good? Is light good? good and bad, you get the point...

The point is I have no clue to the larger answers. But what I do know is that when I write this blog, not all the time of course, but sometimes I get on a roll. I get to feel myself growing, learn for myself about myself, through myself...

And for my sister Tara, that last line just reminded me of this....

Through himmmmm.....with himmm...in himmm....in the unity of the holy spirit...all glory and honor is yours almighty father, forever and everrrrr....

Feeling that change, feeling alive, can happen within us. It can happen through a friend, a family member and hey, even a lion.


This is a snipit of my experience this weekend at South Luongwa, Zambia on Safari. TIA

This...is...Africa

Yes, living in Africa is different from any place than I've known. What is not different is the feeling. At home, school, relationships, I've felt it before. You my friends have felt it before and no matter where you are in the world, who you're with, what time it is, on land or at sea, you can feel this. It's universal, it's human. So, by the transitive property...

You're...in...Africa...

Let me also add that I work daily in an office. That is also Africa. Of course I wouldn't be doing my job as a storyteller if I was giving you just the day in and day out of an office, but the truth is that this office is Africa as well. The office needs improvement. Paperwork, clarity and speed of financials, communication, qualified staff are all needed to make the office run smoother and to continue to train local Malawian staff to eventually take the lead in to what up to now has been predominantly driven by American doctors.

A clear example of some of the challenges facing the doctors and staff here at the clinic/hospital as it is with other such hospitals in Malawi is that in the United States on average there are 2 HIV related deaths per month, while here in Malawi doctors will see 150 in that same time frame. A lot of the deaths here are preventable. In the coming weeks I'll be writing more about a project I'm getting involved with here that will fundraise money to purchase Oxygen concentrators for the children here at the clinic. Children are sharing concentrators, they're not functioning properly, etc. Things that we take for granted as givens in the states with regards to health care just aren't present here.

This incredible loss and sadness is part of the contradictory nature of Malawi as well. There are so many beautiful people dealing with such alarming losses everyday. Sometimes it just doesn't compute. I see such humility and strength, but I also see need, loss and desperation. Which is the "real" Malawi? It's an unanswerable question. Malawi is all of those things. I've written about state dependance before but it seems increasingly worthwhile to mention here. It's something that I used to do a lot that I've learned to manage over the years. When something goes wrong I would become dependant on that state and think that every facet of my life would go wrong. If something was going well, all was well. It was an extreme view, it hinged on my emotions, how I felt and what I was attached to at the moment. Now keep in mind this is very real. Feeling your emotions and giving them their space essential, but is not the complete picture of who a person is. In my example, while I was feeling one emotion, there's an ocean of feelings, thoughts, dreams, molecules running underneath all waiting for their chance to pop up and present themselves. That's more of a complete picture not depending or locking into one state of being. I see that and wish that for Malawi and as I'm writing this it actually falls completely in line with something I was speaking with Eric about last night...

We were talking about Malaria deaths here in Africa and how it dwarfs the number of people it kills as compared to HIV. We were talking about the fact that I'm taking Malarone which is the standard top of the line Malaria Prophylaxis. The idea behind this or any other medication when dealing with a virus is that you're essentially putting this particular strain of the virus to sleep. It's still within you, still a part of your system but the medication you're taking allows the virus to sleep and not take hold of the rest of your body. If you were to miss your medication for a few days, basically what you're doing is giving the virus a chance to "wake up" and replicate. Once it replicates a couple of dangerous things happen. One there is more of the virus in your system and secondly it can be prone to mutuations which then require further and differing medications and or plans of attack. So, as we were speaking about this last night I saw the importance of having a plan in place for yourself at the first sign of symptoms.

Now I'm thinking about that with regards to what I was saying earlier about emotions, the "real" Malawi, etc. It basically ties into one of my favorite movie scenes ever. If you're familiar with John Nash and "A Beautiful Mind" it's the story of a very famous but troubled Mathematician who struggled with multiple personality disorder. Throghout the movie he's visited by 3 main characters who come and go into the distorted webs of his reality/fantasy...One of the final scenes is Russell Crowe asking someone to pinch a new friend of his to see if he's real...He now checks to see who's in the manifested world and who is not. (therefore he's understandably wary of newcomers) And then he's asked do you still see them? Referring of course to the 3 main characters that have been with him his whole adult life...And he says plainly.."Oh yes, I still see them, they're still here, but we have an understanding. I stopped paying attention to them a long time ago and they took the hint"...

I thought that one line beautifully illustrated the struggles that we all, (people, governments, establishments) go through with those aspects of our respective personalities. My hope not only for myself but for all people, organizations, lions, etc, is that we can recognize the things that may not be working, give us trouble and recognize that they're there. They will come and go but most likely usually remain. Our job is to focus on the things that give us joy, light us up, make us feel alive. Thus in a simply elegant way we're able to make a difference first for ourselves and then for the ones we love...