Category Archives: diversity

Day 2

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Day 2 was Friday, March 2. Friday in the Muslim world is like our Sunday, the day of rest.

First we went to this lake high in the mountains called Kargha Lake. In the spring it a destination with paddleboats and picnics. The lake was frozen when we visited, but the view was beautiful. You can see the waterline on this lookout house from when the snow has melted.

Next we went to a refugee camp called Charahi Qambar. This was a pretty singular experience worthy of its own post. For now, here’s a photo from outside the tent.

After you pray it’s time to play. These children were flying kites on the hillside after attending services. There were also people on the hill playing the Afghan national sport of bozkashi. When we first got there, there were a few kites in the sky, by the time we left the entire sky was full of kites.

These two photos are from Babur Garden, a tomb and park named after the Moghul emperor Babur from the 16th century. During the spring this is also a popular picnicking destination.

I kept the ticket to Babur Gardens because I liked the calligraphy:20120417-205122.jpg

Returning home after a long day we were greeted by lambs and goats, or as we started calling them; kebabs.

 

Day 1

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After hearing that my camera had been stolen, my fellow traveler Tim Kutzmark kindly sent me some of his pictures. He’s awesome. I’ll try to post a few of his pictures from each day.

This is a picture of the blue Ali mosque that we went to on the first day.

After a long day of traveling we walked through a nearby cemetery and took pictures of the houses on the hill.

Later we went to see Fatima Akbary, and her company, Golestan-e-Sabak, (I talked a little bit about her in a previous post). She was a widow who had founded an NGO to help women and underprivileged in her community, she ran a girls school, vocational training courses as well as women’s business training.

Below you can see her showing us what had happened over the winter. The tent she had built as a temporary workshop had caved in under the snow and her tools were ruined; she would be unable to fulfill a furniture order that spring.

These are some girls in her class, the one in the pink hijab was reading aloud to us.

Fatima also teaches calligraphy and woodcutting to disabled people, a type of vocational training. This is some of the calligraphy they had done.

Thanks again to Tim for the pictures!

terminology

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Some new terms I learned this week and where I came across them:

ambiguous independence – this term is used to refer to modern single mothers; while they may not be stuck in the abusive marriages they would have suffered through in the past, they often struggle financially without another breadwinner ; Double X Gabfest, according to Hanna Rosin used by Harvard Sociologist Kathryn Edin.

conspicuous conservation – when people buy things in order to convince their neighbors that they are ‘green’ ; freakonomics podcast

fascinator– an ornamental hat ; the Hairpin

Jute– A member of a Germanic people who invaded England in the 5th Century ; Rudyard Kipling: How the first letter was written

phpht – an interjection to show disagreement or annoyance, also one of very few English words without vowels ; Lifehacker: A Better Strategy for Hangman

piede greco (Greek foot) – when the second toe is longer than the first ; Golden Smith via I’m Revolting, also on 25 Everyday Things You Never Knew Had Names

precocious puberty – when puberty appears earlier than normal; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/magazine/puberty-before-age-10-a-new-normal.html?pagewanted=all#

sibling strife – an extreme form of sibling rivalry, where siblings can’t enjoy each others’ company ; Sibling Rivalry Grows Up via Double X Gabfest

I recently heard of a term for a specific type of agoraphobia that affects African Americans when in predominantly white neighborhoods, any help identifying the word would be greatly appreciated.

Updated 6-4-12: 25 Words that don’t exist in English

Updated 6-7-12: apophenia – seeing meaningless patterns in meaningless data

Part 2: Comfort Zone

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In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and other concerns), Mindy Kaling talks about how she used to get out of chores all the time by holding up a book and saying, “But I’m just enjoying Little House on the Prairie so much!” She says it’s the soft spot for her immigrant parents. I had an immigrant parent too, but I think every parent wants their kid to read, and I’ve always found great comfort behind books. So when I got home from my trip I sprinted through the last 2 hunger games books and picked up Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, which I had given to my mother for Christmas.

After my trip to Afghanistan it was good to get back in my comfort zone and it turns out, Mindy Kaling’s humor falls squarely in my wheelhouse. Kaling was, like me, a child of middle class immigrant parents (her parents were from India but met in Nigeria, my father is from Nigeria but met my mom in an Indian religious group). She is also a pop culture nerd who grew up trying to impress her older brother (or rather trying really hard not to embarrass him). She went to prep school and then Dartmouth but worked with a bunch of guys who went to Harvard and could never shake the feeling that everyone was hanging out without her.

When asked on WTF whether the title of her book is an actual fear of hers, Mindy Kaling said yes. For me, it isn’t a fear, it’s a pretty safe assumption; I don’t get out much so if anyone’s hanging out, they’re hanging out without me. But who needs friends when I have books! Seriously I don’t think I’m missing out on the drunken conversation and sad groping, but yeah I know you’re all hanging out without me.

Another thing she mentioned on that podcast is that she often forgets that she’s not a jewish boy, Mark Maron laughed, but this is something that happens to me all the time. When I went to school in Chicago I had this strange realization one night that the people I felt most comfortable with were nerdy Jewish stoners from Northern California. How often do you look at your own face? It is really easy for me to forget that I really don’t look anything like these people.

I got into the Mills Computer Science Masters program and went to a lecture from someone who works for Wikimedia. I would describe the crowd as ‘lesbian nerd,’ this is another place where I felt quite comfortable. I feel very comfortable around data (I don’t really like sports but I just read the ESPN analytics issue cover to cover). When I was in Afghanistan we met many people but the ones I felt most comfortable around were data analysts; so many of our other conversations seemed anecdotal. I’m not great at probabilities but I find comfort in spreadsheets and statistics and the people who use them.

Mindy Kaling is not the same kind of nerd I am, (she studied latin in school and became a comedy writer), but I think we’re a similar type of nerd. I am so glad that she is successful because I feel like it’s a triumph for dorky, irreverent brown girls everywhere. Mindy Kaling speaks for me.

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Dear Reader(s?);
I went back through my blog and found like a gazillion typos. Please email me about typos, it’s embarrassing.

Part 1: Zone of Discomfort

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I’ve read 5 whole books in the past couple weeks. Okay, so each of these books should have taken me less than a day to read and they were mostly distractions from the more serious book that I am ostensibly reading, but they were all great. I read, the Hunger Games Trilogy, Brokeback Mountain (I know it’s a short story, and I actually read most of the stories in Close Range but this one was on its own, so it counts), and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and other concerns). Instead of giving a book report about how great the books were (and all these books were great, except Mockingjay was just okay), I’m gonna talk about my experience reading these books (because a blog is like a therapy session, narcissism is allowed), if you want to know the plots, read them yourself, or watch the movies. I won’t give anything away.

I started the Hunger Games when I left for Afghanistan. When I was working in New York publishing I heard about and saw so many good books that I realized I couldn’t read everything and I was going to need a some ground rules. I settled on this, if I get 3 independent recommendations for the same book it is worth sinking my teeth into (now my definition of the word ‘recommendation’ is extremely broad and in the past I have included the fact that a book is on sale as a recommendation). I had heard good buzz about the Hunger Games so when David Plotz recommended it on the Double X Gabfest, I was waiting outside a local bookstore before I left for New York and I had a new (miles-earning!) credit card burning a hole in my pocket it was the American Express sticker on the door that served as my final recommendation.

I slept on the plane to New York, and while there I was amused enough that I didn’t start reading the book until my flight from Frankfurt to Dubai. By the time I got on the flight from Dubai to Kabul, Katniss was leaving the Capitol for the Hunger Games arena. The irony was not lost on me.

Katniss was prepared, she had her knowledge of hunting, her experience with hunger and her determination to avenge her sister. I had a couple years of Persian and Pashto, experience traveling abroad from an early age, and the determination to stick it to all the haterz who thought I shouldn’t go to Afghanistan. Katniss had her Mockingjay pin, I had postcards from my hometown. Katniss was leaving a land of excess to a go to an impoverished war zone; I was leaving Dubai to go to Kabul.

America is fighting a war in Afghanistan. Apparently Suzanne Collins got the idea for the Hunger Games while watching TV; she was flipping between a reality show and footage of the Iraq war and they started to blend together. The hunger games is, in a way, an extreme reality show, like Survivor except you dont get voted off, you get killed. The destruction is highly televised, the humanity isn’t. In the states, the footage we get of Afghanistan is all of war and destruction. I got to Afghanstan days after the Qur’an burning and the streets were calm, not burning with American effigies. Our tour guide told us that there had been some peaceful protests where the police took care of security, but that these were over. The people we talked to were very upset about what happened, but they had heard Obama’s apology and they understood that it was an accident, they also said their mullas had told them to be patient and calm. These sorts of discrepancies made me wonder whether Kabul was like district 13; had the American media been showing the same loop of angry protestors burning the American flag over the sound of the muezzin? I had all but stopped reading the news coverage of Afghanistan by the time I went to college, I knew people in Kabul who went to work every day, it couldn’t be the burning war zone I saw on TV. What was really going on?*

I wanted to see for myself, and talk to some people, but in a city like Kabul, where billions of dollars come in from foreigners every year, who can you trust? Everyone has an agenda. Even our tour guide wants to show the best face of the country, and his livelihood depends on keeping us happy. We took a lot of pictures, but like the tributes in the arena, everyone knew we were watching from home. How do you smile when you know someone is watching, when they have the ability to drop help from the sky? We interviewed, and filmed, and tried to get to know people and tell their stories, but our time was short and I’m sure some of their messages were lost in translation.

The Hunger Games had a focus on appearances, style, costumes and camouflage. Having never worn a headscarf before, the hijab felt like a costume to me, and I tried my hardest to fit into it. I didn’t have Cinna (or Lenny Kravitz) to help me prepare for the my arena so I just had to wing it. In a way, there is no camouflage more perfect than the burka, hiding in plain sight. I didn’t wear the burka, but with the hijab I could be similarly incognito. At the end of the day instead of looking up to the sky to see the score and hear the anthem, I lay in my bed and listened to the muezzin and wrote about my day.

I tried many things to distract myself so I wouldn’t finish the Hunger Games and I could save it for the trip home. I read a copy of Brokeback Mountain that I found in the guest house, I blogged about my experience, I went to bed early, but in the end, I finished the book, counting on the fact that I would soon be able to buy the sequel in the Dubai airport.

One of the themes in the Hunger Games was fire; the coal in district 12, the way Gale smells like smoke, Katniss’s costume, the fires in the arena. As it was late winter in Afghanistan, fire became a theme of the trip too, children sold smoke for good luck, men warmed their hands in small fires, we visited bakeries where people were crowded around ovens and by the end of the trip each of us smelled like smoke too because each of our rooms in the guest house was heated by a wood chimney. The only time I think I was ever in danger on my trip to Afghanistan was actually in my own room. I was trying to read and was starting to nod off when my room started to fill with smoke. I thought it would go away, and tried to sleep, but I started coughing and noticed by flashlight that the room was hazy, I couldn’t see very well. I was so tired I couldn’t be bothered to get up. When my eyes started to water I tried to open the window by my bed, but the window was covered in plastic to keep the heat in so it wasn’t doing any good. After a few more minutes of coughing I put on my headscarf and went to get the guard. When I opened the door, I saw his look of surprise as smoke billowed out of my room. For a second I felt like Katniss, escaping from the fire that woke her up in the night. But mostly I felt like an idiot when Naqib told me his solution was just to open another window and leave the door open for a few minutes.

On the way home I prepared for my presentation in my hometown. The trip had changed me, and I needed to show that, but I also wanted people to recognize that I was the same person, and that I hadn’t been corrupted by the Middle East. Mostly what I felt though, was dirty. When I got to Dubai my first reaction was that the people looked so white and the airport seemed so clean. Arriving in New York, I felt even grimier after 15 hours on a plane, like Katniss after the games, I needed a skin polish before I got home. I settled for an overpriced mani pedi at JFK.

*I really do not mean to denigrate the journalists who risk life and limb to report the ongoing war. I have the utmost respect for them and the work that they do.

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I have started a new page about my trip to Afghanistan, please visit that page for pictures and some choice thoughts and feelings about the trip. I try to make this blog about my current thoughts and feelings and for or better or for worse, I am no longer in Afghanistan. I’ve touched on the issue of hijab in the last post and in this post I talked about the war so I think that answers some of the major hot topics of the trip. If you have any specific questions please feel free to email me or write in the comments and I’ll try to address them.

The Hijab

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Over the mysteries of female life there is drawn a veil, best left undisturbed
-Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

For the program they told us to make sure we put our headscarf on before we landed in Kabul. I decided to put mine on when I landed in Dubai. As I walked out of the bathroom I felt the way I do whenever I change my appearance; like everyone is staring. But after following the gaze of some onlookers I realized they weren’t staring at me, they were staring at the girl in the polka dot miniskirt.

I became accustomed to it quickly (though practically I still find it difficult to walk in the wind without losing my scarf and to eat without eating my scarf or spilling on it); it seemed the least we could do to show respect for the culture of Afghanistan. We saw no woman outside without a hijab (and inside only twice, with a hijab around her neck). The first days we were there, Thursday and Friday, are the weekend in Kabul and we saw almost no women on the street, only rarely a woman in burqa (chador), who was presumed to be a widow, because, presumably, there is no reason for a woman to leave her house on this day save desperation.

I noticed 3 types of women’s dress, the chador, a more conservative working woman outfit, and a more fashion-forward style. In older parts of town and on holidays we saw many blue burqas but during the week we mostly saw type two, working women with long loose pants or a long skirt, a long-sleeved top which covers the rear and a scarf wrapped loosely around the head. Walking around town, most of the women we saw were going to and from work (the university was over winter break still) and chose this style in earthy colors. The last category I saw in upper class neighborhoods, and occasionally in fancy restaurants, it was very westernized with skinny jeans, pointy black boots to kill, a long sleeved top and a tight hijab often in loud colors with sparkles and jewels. I felt my clothes fit squarely into the middle category, however with my height, I think from behind I probably looked most like an Afghan man. It was very cold and it is not uncommon for a man to tie a scarf around his head during the winter. Their traditional dress is actually quite similar to the women’s.

We were quite the spectacle nonetheless, in a country where one’s ethnicity is easily identifiable by their face and dress, we were a blonde woman taking pictures, a fair man in khakis and a tall black woman. We were tourists, but in a country with such little tourism, no one could place us. So they stared. and stared. and stared. Children would stare, old men would stare, the few women we saw would stare. I didn’t know what it was that made them stare, had they never seen a black person? Someone so tall? A blonde? Was my hair showing? In these situations I was glad I had my headscarf, I would avert my gaze and pull the scarf across my mouth. This is a traditional response to unwanted attention and seemed to bring people’s attention to the fact that they were staring. Sometimes they didn’t stop, but at least they knew they’re were making me uncomfortable. In a world were manners and respect are so important, this tactic seemed to work wonders. In addition to hiding in plain sight, pulling the scarf over my mouth helped keep me from breathing in the thick Kabul dust and the smell of diesel on the road or heating gas inside.

Inside the guest house I would often wear a hoodie, it was difficult for me to brush and plait my hair every morning because it was so cold that overnight it wasn’t guaranteed to dry. Normally my hair is pretty large and in charge so this was a daily challenge. But I found I was rewarded with a new fashion accessory. It may sound inappropriate but I feel that after this experience I can safely integrate the hijab into my wardrobe in situations where I might be more comfortable with it. When I landed in Dubai, I stood on an escalator next to a woman who was literally wearing what I had on for underwear, skinny jeans and a nude camisole (over which I had a long skirt and a large sweater). I had decided I would take off my hijab when i felt comfortable doing do, sitting next to a muslim couple on the plane to DC it didn’t feel right or respectful to take it off. Walking through security the woman asked I could take my scarf off, I said I’d rather not. Finally in New York, walking around with two heavy bags I got hot and changed my clothes to haggle with a Jamaican woman about getting on an earlier flight. My hair looked horrible.

When I leave my room I still like having my hood up, and it’s been raining so I’ve had a good excuse for my scarfy/hoodie look. As a westerner I always wanted to wear the hijab but felt it would be offensive, maybe it still is, but now it feels comfortable and appropriate to me. It’ll fade but I’m happy to have it in the mix.

Naqib the Guard

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Naqibulla is the night guard at the guest house where I am staying. We hit it off initially because he was impressed that I speak some Farsi (my Persian is okay, I can have simple conversations which is fine for the night porter but not great for interviewing a member of parliament, I leave that to our tour guide and translator extraordinaire, Najib). He likes my Iranian accent because during the Taliban he moved to Iran with his family.

He is also stunned by my ‘seeah post‘ or black skin. He says he likes black people. They are good people. There are none in his country but there is a region in Iran called Bandar Abbas that has a lot of Africans. He played me a bandari music video on his phone and showed me his black friend on Facebook (who looked South Asian to me).

He says we are like brother and sister now. He gives me extra blankets and extra wood for my woodstove at night. When I woke up in the morning and my voice was hoarse he asked if I was sick and if my room was warm enough. It was just that he was the first person I’d spoken to, but it was sweet that he was concerned.

He is about my age, 22, but he says since I am a year older that in Afghan culture he should wait on me and bring me chai. He is married and only had 4 years of school because of the problems in his country. In the states when you are a student it means you are poor, here it means you are rich enough to that your family can afford to not have you working. I have gone from the 99% to the 1%, and it feels very strange to have a cook, a driver, a maid and a porter for a week.

Today he asked if i could take a picture with him before I leave. I’m sure he’ll want to show everyone his black friend.
It’s all pretty politically incorrect and frankly makes me a bit uncomfortable, but this whole trip is about stepping outside of my comfort zone a bit, and Naqib is genuine and sweet.

Gotta brush my hair and put on a hijab before the cook comes in to tell me breakfast is served. Laterz.

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Framing the Conversation

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I arrived in Kabul this morning. Two days ago I was in New York staying with a friend from high school. He is a highly skilled craftsman who makes, among other things, gorgeous wooden frames. He recently found a rare New York apartment that let him set up a small woodworking studio downstairs and he’s saving up for a bandsaw.

Today I visited another place that makes frames; Golestan Sabak. This school, run by a wonderful widow named Fatima Akbari, teaches women and children. The students learn not just literacy but also vocations like embroidery and carpentry. In particular we visited the workshop where disabled people learn woodcarving, calligraphy and frame-making. 3 weeks ago a big snow dump caused her tent to collapse, destroying their electric saw.

Another recent New York conversation echoes in my head. My friend and I were eating lunch at Columbia where some students were protesting the settlements in Gaza. I asked my friend how he felt about the protest and he said essentially ‘Think Globally Act Locally’ that there are plenty of problems to deal with in New York. But one of the problems is misinformation. People just don’t know about the settlements or about women’s carpentry workshops in Afghanistan. Well maybe a couple people do now.

Access to Education

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Lately I’ve been thinking about education, the Russian and I had a heated discussion this weekend about it, she’s starting school again after winter break and I’m applying to a masters program. Also, it has been in the news because of President Obama’s recent State of the Union speech. Lack of access to education, I feel, is one of the biggest global problems. I don’t have any solutions right now, but I wanted to express my gratitude towards the people and institutions who contributed towards mine:

My mom is the one who filled out all the financial aid forms growing up, and taught me how to make the system work for me. She has worked, and continues to work tirelessly to make sure her children get the chances she didn’t get. My mom’s (now) husband started this blog for her which is probably worth checking out (if you didn’t grow up within earshot of my mother): Zen of Folding

The branch of the Oakland Public Library by my house was influenced by the Black Panther movement and the Black Muslims in the neighborhood. Without all those books about little black girls I am sure I wouldn’t have the confidence to achieve what I have so far. (Bill Cosby explains what can happen when you don’t get this kind of enforcement: A Boy Like Me)

Addendum 5-27-12: This branch was the African American Museum and Library which later moved to downtown Oakland. Explains a lot.

The Crowden School was my first summer camp. I met the Russian there and I learned that I could make music too (it wasn’t just for big kids like my brother).

A shoutout to A Better Chance (ABC), for paying for my testing, my first trip to a college campus (USC), and helping students of color get a fair shake.

The East Bay French American School
 was where I learned the French language, French culture, and as my mother says, where I learned to hate French people.

Head-Royce
 Middle School sucks. It sucked for me, and it sucked for a lot of others, but without it, none of us would have any soul. And if I hadn’t hated middle school so much I never would have ended up at my high school.

Interlochen Arts Camp
was awesome, my first sleep away camp. I won the ‘Honor Camper’ award and played in piano quintet, piano for 10 hands. My first experience of a humid summer where I got stung by all manner of mosquitos for the first time. My scholarship there was sponsored by Kellogs. Thanks for the corduroy knickers!

Walden
a music composition camp in New Hampshire. I got the best music theory education, made some great friends and wrote a couple pieces of music. Not bad for a 12-year-old.

Putney
little Putney, my hippie farm school. When I heard that Seventeen Magazine came to do a profile on the school and the students protested their body image perpetuation, I was sold. I couldn’t really have gone anywhere else.

Center for Talented Youth
really should been called Center for Privileged Youth, if I remember correctly you have to take a pretty expensive test to get in. But the scholarship I got there was all-inclusive, they told me if there was a pair of flip flops that everyone had, and I couldn’t afford (Havaianas anyone?), that they would help me pay for them. I had been at Putney for a few years though, so I was pretty anti-consumerist.

Summer Intensive Language Study
 (SILS) at Northfield Mount Hermon; it looks like this program is now defunct, which is a bummer. By now you can probably tell that my mother believed that summers were a time for learning, not lazing. If we weren’t taking a class over the summer, we were supposed to get a job.

University of Chicago
Where fun goes to die. I was cold, miserable and well educated.

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
When I went in to interview I went on a long rant about how I didn’t believe in affirmative action and I hated teaching, how did I get this fellowship?

After finals in Chicago I began calculating how much money I had been given by these institutions over the years and it came out to over $500,000. I don’t have enough money to pay it back yet, but hopefully the things I learned will help me earn enough to pay it back soon.

There are many ways we rationalize the bounty we all receive in our lives but first and foremost I’d like to say just say “Thank You”. I feel very lucky to have had these opportunities.

That said, I hope these institutions feel lucky to have had me as well. All that money I got for being a poor black girl doesn’t negate the fact that I am a poor black girl with all that entails (though I’m working on the poor part). A friend once suggested that I’ve repaid the money I was given in unpaid diversity photo-ops and other marketing. In addition, I worked hard for my scholarships, maintaining a GPA, trying to be a model minority since I was the only black person for miles, and being the only black person for miles, these tasks aren’t easy for anyone, especially a young person.

I tend to think that someone’s sex, race, socio-economic background, religion, age, etc. is about as important as their shoe size, but I wouldn’t think this way if it weren’t for my education, which I got because people thought otherwise. We should live in a world that doesn’t need affirmative action, but we don’t.

p.s. I also like to think I got into some of these places because I’m smart, but who knows.