2/11/10 Doonesbury update

In addition to writing here about my appreciation for this week's Doonesbury strips, I sent a short note to the folks at their website. My motives were twofold - one, I wanted to tell them directly how grateful I am for their handling of this topic, and two, it seemed right to let them know that I'd used their copyrighted material. (I'm pretty sure that posting it on a blog with full attribution falls somewhere under "fair use", but it still seemed like the right thing to do.)

To my surprise, I received a personal, gracious response from the webmaster (a couple of them, actually!), plus my note was posted on their comments page. Thanks to that link, several dozen folks have found my blog for the first time. Thanks, Doonesbury, for helping me meet Goal #3! :)

2/10/10 G. B. Trudeau on Sexual Harassment

I want to give a shoutout to G. B. Trudeau, creator/artist behind Doonesbury. Over the 15 or so years that I've been aware of him, his strips have provided some of the sharpest, most consistently thoughtful political satire, commentary, and insight that I've seen anywhere. More than anything else, though, he's repeatedly demonstrated the courage to tackle issues that most others avoid.

This week, he's tackling sexual harassment of servicewomen. "Melissa", the blonde character in the strip below (from Monday), we met a year or two back, in a VA support group. One of the long-term characters, B. D., had lost a limb in Iraq*, and he met Mel, who had been raped by a fellow soldier. Over time, she decides to re-up, and is now back on active duty. Which brings us to this week:

But Trudeau doesn't mask the multi-dimensionality of the issue. Sexual harassment is usually defined as Unwanted sexual attention that makes the recipient feel threatened. Note the words "unwanted" and "feel" - sexual harassment is in the eyes of the recipient. The object of the objectification. The same actions can feel threatening to one person and not to another, which Trudeau addressed in Tuesday's panel:

These women are both receiving heightened levels of attention, but while one is enjoying it, the other, a rape survivor, has to fight to endure it. The difference is completely internal, and very real.

Here in Morocco, most unmarried women will receive attention from men whenever they go out in public. Some women find it flattering. Indeed, one of our Language/Culture Facilitators (our Welcome-to-Morocco tutors, more or less) said that if she doesn't get catcalls, she feels unattractive and has a bad day.

She's young and attractive and dresses in form-fitting, western-style clothes...but we all get stared at. Young women more than older women; foreign-looking women (Caucasian, Asian, African-descended) more than local women. And while some, like that LCF and the brunette from this week's Doonesbury strips, find the attention flattering and welcome...for others, it's a painful invasion.

And some of us react like this, from today's cartoon:

...and, like Mel, not all of us get support in our reactions from our friends.

I'm eager to see how Mel's story will continue in the coming days, and grateful that Trudeau is using his enormous bullhorn to draw attention to this complex issue.

* The fact that a cartoon character is a wounded vet - an amputee, at that - is just another breathtaking example of Trudeau's unflinching courage in addressing the important issues of our day.

2/7/09 Yet Another Post on Showering

The other day, a friend brought this to my attention:

...it made me smile.

And realize just how many factors go into Enjoyment Of Shower[ing].

At this point, I think I've had every kind of bad shower there is. Showers without enough pressure. Without enough hot water. Without enough water at all. Showers that vacillate between scalding hot and arctic cold. Showers where I only realize after I'm all soaked that I didn't bring any soap and shampoo, so I can either dress and go shopping or settle for whatever chlorine is in the water.

I've learned how to mitigate for a lot of these. At the hotel 4 hours away where I've taken probably 80% of the showers I've gotten in the past two years, I know (now) how to confirm that the water is running through the hot water heater; how to check that the buta tank is full enough to keep powering the hot water heater throughout my shower; how to rinse myself (and, harder, my hair) with barely a trickle of water coming out; how to trick people into thinking that both showers are in use, since there's only enough hot water for one (and it tends to wander back and forth between them if both are going)... And then they up and replaced their hot water heater with an *electric* one with a 20-gallon tank. That runs for about 5 minutes when I'm alone, two and a half minutes if someone else is showering, too. (Plus, they rebuilt the showers, so now I can't trick people into thinking that the empty ones are in use.) So instead of getting one long, glorious hot shower every couple weeks, I now get a short, rushed, and stressful hot shower.

Some things I've learned about myself:

* While high-pressure is nice, it's not important.

* Hot water IS important. Tepid showers make me grumpy and cold showers? I'll get out and stay dirty.

* If I haven't washed my hair in over a week, it takes 3 shampooings to be fully clean.

* If I'm spongebathing out of a bucket, I need to be surrounded by hot air.

* Cleanliness of the shower doesn't matter, either. I've showered with a tarantula, stepping around vomit... If the water is hot and plentiful, I can (and have) put up with nearly *anything*.

12/19 Simple Life

A friend sent me this:

I found the comic especially apt for two reasons: One, it's a reminder that my Peace Corps life *does* meet my simple needs (not that I have a good woman - or man - by my side, but I do have bread and sun!)...and two, because owning a computer with internet access itself has become something that feels like a simple need - and it's good to remember that maybe it's not. It represents communication with loved ones, for which I'm forever grateful...but it also requires functioning electrical currents, satellite connections, and phone service, all three of which fail, independently, here in my mountain aerie.

So as grateful as I was last night when gchat worked for the first time in a month - and believe me, I am grateful, I talked to five of my favorite people in the world! four of them for the first time in weeks or months! - it's good to remember that, even when the internet goes down, as it does at least once a week, I still have the bread and the sun and the love of many wonderful people.

It's the simple things, friends.

12/16 Skype

This is the PhD Comic for today:

I've noted parallels between grad school and Peace Corps before - the relative poverty, the self-determined work schedule, the total lack of hygiene - but this one struck a chord, probably because I talked to my family on Skype just last night. :)

Yes, having in-home internet access definitely makes this Posh Corps (as opposed to your garden-variety, mud-hut Peace Corps). But all PCVs have *some* form of access to the internet. I think everyone has a cybercafe in their souq town; teh intarwebs stretch even here, in rural Morocco. And with internet comes connection to America. Whether it's group emails, or blogs (like this one!), or individual missives, or Skype phone calls, the internet has connected PCVs to their families and friends back home to a degree that previous generations of Volunteers couldn't have imagined.

And now, as the vast majority of us look at a holiday season thousands of miles from our loved ones, we can be grateful for the degree of connectedness we *do* have.

Lhumdullah i l-internet!

6/5/09 Grooming habits...

Many of my friends back in the US are in/finishing/recently finished graduate school, so they keep me up-to-date on PhD Comics.

This one made me laugh out loud because it's at least as applicable to Peace Corps Volunteers as grad students (although they at least have hot running water, so they have fewer excuses...).

I know PCVs who have leaned out their window, beckoned over a kid, given him a few dirhams and sent him to the store to pick up eggs and bread, so that they don't have to groom at all and can still eat.

The "Thesis Beard"? Yeah, I don't know *any* male PCVs who shave daily. Maybe there are some, but I don't know them. Most shave when they get to shower, which is once or twice a week for most of us, but nobody shaves every morning. And beards are common.

(Funny sidenote: One PCV buddy showed up for our six-month-in training session (In-Service Training, or IST, officially) with a full beard. He then shaved it down to massive sideburns and goatee a la General Burnside, then to trim sideburns and a goatee a la Sean Penn, down to a mustache, etc. His face looked different every time I saw him, which of course was the point.)

For the record, I've brushed my teeth every day, even when I had to heat water on the stove before I could do it. And I think I've brushed my hair every day, although there were a few weeks in the winter when I had a hat on 24/7, and I may have missed a few days in there. But showering? Putting in contacts?? Wearing makeup??? Ha. Hahahahaha...