I fa a kani, barisa I a kani (Your father is good, because you are good.)

So, it’s pretty hard for me to describe my home stay family in a way that would do them any justice. To start with the basics…
You’re staying with a homestay family? I thought you were at a site somewhere far away right now! So, I’m not a volunteer yet. Like I said in post Welcome Back and a Disclaimer, I’m training right now to be sworn in (hopefully) as a volunteer on January 6, 2012. What’s training? Good question. Training in Peace Corps Mali (it varies from country program to country program, as Peace Corps is pretty decentralized) is basically 2 months and 1 week of language and technical skills training, with a heaping side of cultural learning tacked on. We stay in a home stay alone (thought with other volunteers in home stays in the same village/mile) for about 1.5 months of it, and have language learning every day but Sundays, with some cross culture lessons here and there on respect for elders or gender roles (was a hard one for me, coming back to that one). Then 3 weeks are spent at the lovely Tubaniso, our training site about half an hour outside of Bamako, the capitol of Mali. We have most of our technical training at Tubaniso. When I say “technical training,” I mean that, as a health sector volunteer, I’m going to be…
-Doing ameliorated porridge demonstrations só that people know how to make their daily porridge they have a lot here call “seri” or “moni,” based off of rice or corn frequently, more nutritious
-Weighing babies at CSCOMs (Malian health clinics on the most local level that do vaccinations, have maternity wards frequently, and have beds for when people are sick but not sick enough to go to larger health centers) and doing malnutrition info sessions
-Painting murals (personally the one thing I’m the most excited about!! I think it’ll be the most meditative.) about different healthy habits, like good breastfeeding techniques, etc
-AIDS/STI education workshops
-etc.
So, a lot of this training goes down at our training site. My village I’m in home stay in is called Montougula, and it’s comprised of basically 16 villages. I’m in one, and my father is the mayor of Montougula proper. He speaks both Bambara, the language that I’m learning for my service, and French. Which means that, my language skills have gotten far better in terms of French, because the little things that I can’t understand in Bambara that they say or the things I want to say that are too complex to say in my limited Bambara, I can say in French. With Bambara, it’s going quite well! I can say enough that I’m aware of what’s going on through a mix of the random words and gesticulation. I’m feeling more and more confident. It’s hard when people speak fast, but otherwise, I’m feeling good about my language skills. Because I’m really auditory and write down everything new that we go over in class vocab-wise, it’s going really well and I can’t complain much. It just kinda sucks existentially to not be able to express yourself to anyone but other Peace Corps people for months. And it’s only been one month away from home so far. It makes you think about how much you take the interaction you have with people you know really well for granted, like I feel I did in the US where I culd just pick up a phone and not worry about how much credit it costs to talk to someone for hours about nothing.
My mom is amazing. One thing that is really common here that is a bit different for me, as Mali is a Muslim country (90% Muslim, 9% Animist, which essentially means traditional African religion and tendencies in religious practices, and 1% Christian), is the common practice of polygamy. Men usually have between two and four wives here. That phrase alone is a tad different for me to say, as I’m used to kind of being a gender warrior of sorts in the states who advocates for these wonderful healthy relationships that most people in this world unfortunately do not have. As an advocate for healthy relationships, I’m avidly against gender imbalance in relationships as well. Thus, in Mali, where our cross culture sessions as well as input from Malians I have asked have proved to suggest, it is very different for me to think of womyn as people in relationships who do not have decision-making power or who can be one of many. I know that this also happens in the US, clearly, though albeit not too often in the form of polygamous marriage or relationships. But it does happen. It’s just a different world for me to hear that “…Men would never go to womyn for any decision in the home. That is a last resort.” Or, that, “If a wife dies, a man is left alone with no one to care for his children…[so] it’s better to have more than one wife [in case this happens.] [But if the man dies,] a womyn will be able to get married again easily, [so she doesn’t need many husbands.]” On the same note, the idea of spousal abuse, which is considered culturally acceptable here (for men to beat their wives), is very different for me to consider as a norm. I personally have done a lot of domestic violence and sexual assault work in the US, and it’s difficult for me to not be apart of a movement to help womyn have more say in relationships in general. I must stress that all of these problems are problems around the world and not just in Mali—surely, we have several people in the US who believe it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife, believe that womyn should not make decisions not only in marriage but in general, and believe that men should have womyn in their lives in case things go wrong but do not believe the reverse because womyn can handle hardship. The difference here is that these are widely held beliefs, to what I have seen, instead of beliefs that people might keep to themselves, as I feel they do in the US, for fear of being seen as unPC.
Back to ma host mama, I love her. And I hope that all contributed to me explaining that my family seems quite atypical for a muslim one in Mali. As my father is the mayor, my mother doesn’t have to do many things around the house, since she always has help. Besides cooking and taking care of her children, she can spend hours a day just chatting with me about whatever we want to chat about, or making green tea, which is stronger here than in the US and really big as a social activity to make in these little teeny pots and have 3-4 rounds of in teeny glasses while chatting for hours (LOVE IT). She told me at some point the title of this post, “I fa a kani, barisa I a kani.” I feel it’s the most appropriate thing any one has said to me while I’ve been here to share with you all, because it reflected, for me, so much warmth and understanding that I find abundant in my conversations I have with the Malians I’ve met in Montougula. Not to exoticize or whip out that “friendly native” bizz, but when you act like you care here, people care about you, remember you, and look out for you. They want you to be happy if you care about them and ask them how they’re doing through a series of what can feel like quite lengthsome greetings at times, paha. (i.e., “Good morning! How’s your family doing? How’re you doing? How’s your father? How’s your mother? How’d you sleep? G-d bless the day.” AND THAT’S ONLY A MORNING GREETING, TO ONE PERSON. My grandmother will give me several blessings every morning at night, to which I solemnly respond, ‘Amina!’) I thought, because of womyns’ sole role in raising children most of the time here, that telling my mother about my family structure in the US would be quite a stretch, But when I told her that my mother had me when she was in her early 30s, died, and that my father raised me since I was 6, she said that he must be good, “because [I] am good.” Bambara works in this wonderful way where you say what someone does or what’s happening before you say how you feel about it or why it is evident. So having her cite me as how she knows my father is good, without even knowing him and only hearing about him, was beautiful for me.
Which goes to, I have been given a Malian name by my host family! My name is Masira Coulibaly. My grandmother’s name is Masira too, but that’s all I know regarding the meaning of my first name. My last name is a noble name in the Bambara ethnic group, the largest in Mali. It was a name that a prominent king held at one point. In order to make more amicable relationships with everyone in his domain, he utilized the “joking cousins” phenomenon (this thing where people with certain last names joke with each other to ease tensions between groups and families for the past 800 years in Mali because a king said they should, and it’s super fun—we usually just call each other “bean eaters” because the indirect joke that people fart a lot here is hilarious to Malians, which I kinda love but can be weird if you think about it for too long). He made it so that everyone was his joking cousin. So, everyone that I meet says I both sound like a donkey and indirectly that I fart a lot, whenever they learn my name. It’s kind of a trip.
I have four host-brothers and one host-sister, who I believe is usually off at school. My second oldest host brother, who’s 10, loves me to itty bitty bits and pieces, which I loooooove. He holds a flashlight for me to prepare my most coveted salads that few trainees get in homestay (food is mostly variations of risen millet, corn meal, rice, porridge, potatoes, and sauces with a good bit of oil). He follows me around the village. We love each other. And now, when we play slap jack, which was my cultural gift to Mali thusfar, whenever I win, like I always do (you know), he’s started doing some trash talk back. LOVE IT.
Have a 2-year-old brother nick-named Bwa who I also love to pieces. Though he always just asks if I can play cards so he can watch (over, and over again), he giggles at me and loves to eat, so his chubbiness and hand-holding brings me happiness daily. My female cousin Ia also loves me, singing, and dancing, so her crazy bubbly self keeps me motivated. She’s 14 I think.
Why has it been SO LONG?! Got to go to the American club before coming back to the training site for Thanksgiving. American club is basically a pool, flushing toilets (a little bit of a surprise coming here was that I would be doing some extracurricular fluids aiming in order to do bathroom calls, just a tad closer to the ground that I’m used to, if ya know what I mean, but you get used to it), the possibility of Mexican-like food (got quesadillas!), beer, and sports courts with some wifi on the side. The answer, invisible person, to your question is, these last three weeks is the longest I will go without being able to access internet for an extensive amount of time. The first three weeks of training, they intentionally cut us off from everything so that we’re fully immersed in the culture and language. So, I come back here in eight days, then get my site assignment (AHHHHHHH, wanna go to the cooler and southern region Sikasso, full of vegetables and fruits, good and beautiful and aplenty), am away for 5 days for my site visit, come back, then home stay again for one last week, then back here. See?! Never again for this long am I separated from internet! Which means, more updates on what I experience and more hearing back from YOU GUYS, and time to write letters during site!
Coming back to aiming in bathroom situations, one thing people don’t use here is toilet paper. This might be surprising to here, but I must share. People here practice anal washing, meaning, they carry water in a type of plastic kettle-looking container called a “Selidaga” to the bathroom with them and use this to clean themselves after using the bathroom instead of toilet paper. At first, THIS SHOCKED ME. Then, I forgot to bring toilet paper from the training site to me at home stay. And, LET ME TELL YOU:
1. Better for the environment! WAY LESS WASTEFUL THAN TOILET PAPER.
2. SO MUCH CLEANER! So, you wipe your behind after delightful things like pooping with your left hand, which is why, culturally, you don’t ever greet people with your left hand or eat with your left hand, as you eat with your hands and not utensils here. (FYI, if you’ve never eaten pasta with your hands, you’ve never been truly happy. Go home and try it TODAY, and change your life for the better!). But, the water cleans far more than TP does. Didn’t believe it until I tried it, but you give your hands a good washing afterwards, and it’s true! I love it, really!
3. I’m just gonna come out and say it, don’t care who knows it: Extra loving to your butt. In our culture, no loving goes to the butt. With this practice, it does. And, FYI, if I ever reference the Selidaga again, as I commonly now say “Selidaga ‘till the DAY I DIE,” you’ll know what I’m a’ sayin’.
Just soak it in, let it marinate. You know, Dae sot.
WHICH REMINDS ME, I have a lot of birthdays I want to do shout outs for, but preliminarily, HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY MELISSA AND ALEX! I love you guys loads and hope it was an amazing day for the two of you. Thought of you really fondly here and hope you’re doing really well ☺.
Last notes, I guess, are that I’ve been running at least 3 days a week, and have gotten up to 30 minutes at a time! Was a goal of mine ☺. Finally got a rhythm going. And, on book number 2 here. Can’t really wait to be able to cook for myself at site, and cut the amount of carbs I eat here in half, because I MISS FIBER AND FRUIT! But, my family is lovely, and I really, like I said, can’t complain. I’m really blessed to be here, and have some amazing friends here already who support me and check on me and want me to smile as much as possible. It’s really good. Which is ALSO funny, but good, “a kani,” is pronounced “akayeen” here, and everyone’s like, YO NAME IS SO GOOD, to which I always respond, WELL YES, BUT NOT IN THE SAME GOOD WAY, BUT YES! Poop stories are abundant, for everything from having to poop in a bag because someone’s using the bathroom, to having diarrhea that probes your soul violently. My village has gotten really close, since we’re far away from other trainees and don’t see them unless we’re at a training together. It’s good. We discuss hard times, poop times, and hard pooping times. You really might not get it unless you were here. I love it dearly. MONTOUGS FO LIFE! I also feel that because we’re a little more isolated than all the other trainees this early on, it might help us adjust easier to site. But this is just a feeling. We all have Malian counterparts at our sites that are kind of our partners in crime in all the work we do, so I’ll never be alone. It’s just that, I’ll be alone when it comes to English. Peace Corps people become pretty close when we’re the only ones we don’t have to pay large amounts of money to talk to in English, on the phone or via them coming here or us going to visit them. You get close.
So, I hear your birthday’s coming up, girrrrrrrl! WHY YES, IT IS! As is Hanukah, December 20-28 (and there are 5 other Jewish volunteers in Mali, só we’re gonna be celebrating Jewish Christmas at a volunteer house in Bamako with Chinese food and a movie on the 25th, YAY). And I have the following schematic to help you help me have an amazing one ☺. In terms of sending ANYTHING, though, send it to the address in the second-to-last blog post no later than December 1. I’ll be moving to site soon and mail takes awhile to arrive in any form, so sending it any later might mean I don’t get it Until early April!
I don’t have a lot of money, but I want to do something special for you because I love you and care about you.
Great!! Do any one of the following things:
-Write me a letter telling me a funny story or a story that reminded you of me or something to that affect, so I can look back on it fondly from time to time and get mail from someone I love.
-Send me a drawing/painting with that letter só I can stick it up in my hut at site when I get there! Small and wonderful way to see a piece of you every day in my life in Mali.
-Send me pictures of us in that letter. Slash, ridiculous magazine cutouts/collages. You catch my drift. Things I can put up that show me some parts of the magnificent, bizarre, and beautiful you that sent them to me ☺.
I might not have loooooads of money, but I would love to send you a care package!
YES. The following are things I would love for you to send regardless of whatever you wanted to send to me, because I need them constantly and love them greatly:
-TISSUES
-Any of the following foods: Lara/Clif bars; Trekmix (at Trader Joe’s, has cashews and cranberries and cherries and is DELICIOUS); Dried mango (the juicy kind)/papaya/pineapple; and chocolate in plastic baggies só that in case it melts, I can still consumes it gleefully (tip: love the chocolate slash mint combo, like Junior mints ☺).
-Ginger or mint tea bags
NOW, the following are just gravy and wonderful birthday gifts I currently need:
-brightly coloured leggings (I’m a size large/10-12, and these would be helpful, as they allow me to wear shorter clothing as long as my knees are covered by them)
-funky/groovy/bright shirts that cover my shoulders (tank tops are a no, and I’m a size large)
-long skirts that have style (size large/10)
-Maple butter (BIG COMFORT FOOD in the US that they will NEVER HAVE HERE, if you can find it)
-Body wash that smells delicious (easier to use than bars of soap, which get sticky and melt here quite quickly; send in a plastic bag in case it opens while being sent here)
-LUSH PRODUCTS (TEA TREE WATER TONER is a product they have that keeps my face happy and wonderful, and if you can snag some Mask of Magnamity facial stuff, it has mint in it which keeps me cool and calms my face down in this crazy heat, a large blessing. Just send Lush stuff in a plastic bag or two so it doesn’t spill while being sent)
-Air freshener (like pauperrie, for my outdoors bathroom that I will want to make smell like roses. It’s my inner Martha Stewart. If you’d like to, please humour me)

THANK YOU FOR THINKING OF ME IF YOU SEND ME EVEN A PIECE OF NOTEBOOK PAPER SAYING YOU LOVE ME IN BIG CAPITOL LETTERS. It means the world to me and thank you for sending any and all love my way, including any e-mails and FB messages many of you have sent already. I’ll keep letting you know when I can skype.
Main point: yes, I’m happy here. It’s hard, I won’t lie about that. It’s very different in many ways I could not have guessed it would be before being here so I couldn’t ‘prepare’ for it, you feel like you have very little control over your day-to-day since your home stay family (thankfully but sometimes you resent it, quite naturally) does EVERYTHING for you, and you can’t express yourself. I’m overwhelmed about getting to site and not doing anything really for some months because I don’t know enough language and haven’t even settled in. Impending feelings of uselessness make me a little nervous. So I do question and requestion my commitment quite often. But right now, I’m happy to be here and to have the opportunity to think about how I want to improve myself and help others at the same time. You have a lot of time here to think, and for me, my relationship to my life and my body, in terms of gratitude, was lacking in ways I couldn’t have imagined before. It’s good, though albeit hard, to be able to focus on all of that now.
CAN’T WAIT TO TALK TO SO MANY OF YOU! Getting back to e-mails over the next 3 days, please give me some time to respond, as too many of you have shown me love and responding to each thoughtfully takes me a little bit, and know that you’ll never have to wait this long to hear from me again afterwards ☺. Also, READY TO WRITE YOU ALL LETTERS! Send me one, and I’ll send you one back, PROMISE. Already bought the stamps and ish ☺. PHOTOS NEXT POST, I PROMISE!

Love,
Later populace

So, it's kind of a shitty story...

HERE IN MALI! Got in on Sunday afternoon, exhausted after discussing my expectations of my service here in Mali to the max with my group in Philadelphia. Basically, we got into training for 8 hours straight, with everyone on 2 hours of sleep and no foods in our tummies, and then had our last night on the town (i.e., dinner, because we were all so tired), before I had a luxurious Lush-filled bath for the last time in 2 years!

Got to see snow on Saturday for the last time in awhile! It was a really nice, winter-wonder-filled way to go, minus the fact that I was dressed for literally 100 degree weather (every day here in the cold season). But, coming into the airport was a disorienting experience. This next part is gonna sound intense, but I think it's just apart of a personal journey to better recognizing myself within any context, which is an overwhelmingly spiritual and dignifying experience that I feel blessed to have :-).

Basically, being Kenyan in Peace Corps Mali is an interesting combination. Everything I expected to see (i.e., no running water, no electricity, washing your hands before eating, things being a little dustier, things being in a different language a large amount of the time) was not what surprised me. What surprised me coming in to the training site from the airport was the responses of other volunteers. This is not because they were strange, mean, or anything out of the ordinary from what my father remarked upon noticing the first time he arrived in Nairobi to do his post-doctorate: different drainage systems, less infrastructure, womyn with baskets of different things on their heads, soccer games as social focal points, cities that look less extensive than DC, etc. What surprised me, rather, was how this, for me, was something I've never questioned, and that, for many other people here with me right now, it is. It makes me feel a little...dissociated from everyone else. I'm constantly pouring over how I can learn Bambara (the language I'll be speaking at my service site I get to on January 7 if I get through training, fingers crossed :-) ) in order to feel more like I do in Kenya (since one of the main languages there is English, so I can always feel at home). So I can feel more like I'm not here on some sort of cultural ride that gives me the upper hand of expecting some differences already without hesitation along with this sense that Nairobi's more comfortable because people know me there and love me already, regardless of how I present myself in these first, incredibly important introductions I feel I'm about to make with homestay families and continuously with other trainees and volunteers. I feel like other volunteers are adapting to the rest of it that I just don't think of things to "adapt" to. I mean, minus changing up some essential routines (i.e., bathroom activities, washing my underwear, which I SUCK at, paha, etc.), I'm focusing on how to make my identity show through in this new gender role, this new culture. How to cover my knees but still speak loudly and effervescently. How to joke and joke similarly to how I usually do in English. How to carry that sarcasm! It's just strange to know that other people might do this at different times than me. It feels a little isolating. It means that, so far, the few tears I've had have been because I thought I might have eaten meat (I didn't, but that's spiritually a problem for me if it happens), or because I feel as though I might not honour my mother's memory with grace in everything I relay to womyn in the future site I do service in through my health education post. I've been engaging with really wonderful people about their identities. I just want mine to feel like it fits in Bambara, like in Kenya. It feels different, being from "Africa," I guess. I hope that all makes sense.

BUT THIS IS NOT THE REASON FOR THE NAME OF THIS POST!! The REASON, though, for the post name, is that I HAVE ALREADY SHIT MYSELF! (Excuse my language, populace). First full day here, it was probably a combination of crappy Chinese food, loads of coffee, and a lot of hot sauce at my first meal here, but I had a really serious mix of bad diarrhea and dizziness (definitely from the States) when in anything but a lieing-down position, and I SHAT MYSELF. Apparently, it happens to eeeeeeverybody at least once! If yo' laughin', that's 'cause you hidin' somethin' too, is what I learned, paha. In Peace Corps, we talk about poop. All the time. It's a good thing. No, really--it is.

Along with the identity struggles and learning how to WASH MY UNDERWEAR (see where that comes in, now?), the culture here is beautifully different. People are genuinely so much nicer. Greetings are big here, so people constantly acknowledge each other (literally, as opposed to trying not to say hello to someone when you cross their path, which is considered incredibly rude here), and joking is big, especially with people with your same cultural background if you're Malian (we're given Malian names here, so we are basically given an ethnicity that we're allowed to incessently joke with to ease tension and enjoy ourselves). On toooop of all that, I found out, I don't have to take vacation off when people visit me here in Mali!!! Which means, a. PLEASE VISIT IF YOU WANTED TO!! (lookin' at YOU, Sofia, Rai, Christina, and Zarela), and b. COME FOR AS LONG AS YOU EFFING WANT. 2-3 weeks would be FINE. And, this also means, I MIGHT COME HOME AT SOME POINT! For, like, 2 weeks. It depends. I might also just spend more time in Kenya. But now, I've got about 7 weeks (weekends don't count as time taken off here :-) ) of vaca, and I wanna spend 3 weeks of it with fam. We'll see.

No Timbouctou, apparently, because of security advisaries, which SUCKS, but otherwise, I'm beginning to love this. Henna on my hands for the upcoming Tabaske (a religious holiday), and ready to learn some mo' Bambara!

Ate logo, populace, from Mali :-).

Welcome back!! + DISCLAIMER

Welcome back, populace!

I am embarking upon the next big journey in my life, as a "Health Education Extension Agent" in the Peace Corps. I'm going to be in Mali, a country in West Africa (see left). I will be there from October 30, 2011 - January 6, 2014. I get training from October 30, 2011-January 6, 2012 (when I'll hopefully swear in as a Corps Volunteer), and then go to my post, which I will be given halfway through training, until January 6, 2014 (the regular 2 years of service which volunteers must complete).

What? "Health Education Extension Agent"? Great question! The government of Mali has made a goal to totally decentralize their primary health care system by 2015. That means, taking it out everywhere, including places where I might be posted, without electricity or running water. They have Peace Corps volunteers carrying out dissemination of public health messages in order to support this goal. I will be talking about any of the following health issues in Mali through radio broadcast, theatrical skit (as the literacy rate is low, 26-47%, in parts of the country I'll be posted in), and/or/even talking to primary and secondary school students: -pre/postnatal counseling -nutritional counseling for mothers of children under the age of 5
-HIV/STIs (though Mali's HIV prevalence rate, 1.5% (as of 2007), is half that of Washington, DC, 3% (as of 2010))
-family planning
-other infections/common diseases (i.e., think diarrhea and accompanying dehydration, etc.)

DISCLAIMER
In order to keep things peachy on this here blog site, you're gonna have to understand that:
"The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps."

But Akinyi, I love you and will miss you and will never be able to talk to you EVER AGAIN! But, imaginary person, you have proven yourself to be a LIAR! I will in fact be on the internet at least once every 2 weeks. If you...
Need my e-mail address? Ask me for it.
Want my physical address to send me wonderful things, like paintings/drawings/doodles I can hang up like your mother would when you were in kindergarten, vegan non-perishable snacks that I can munch on, pictures of us I can hang up, and other faaaabulous gifties (NOTE: Hanukah this year is December 20-28, and birthday is December 21 :-) )?

Akinyi Shapiro, PCT
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 85
Bamako, Mali

NOTE: Send things (letters and packages)via "airmail," and they should get to me within 3-4 weeks. Figure that it will take 2 months to hear a response from me.

Send me things to your heart's content! I WILL RESPOND. I really have little else to do but focus on you without this apeshit crazy screen-based culture of madness around me for 2 years and 2 months. So, keep 'em coming! E-mails, snail mail, all of it.

Plans after Peace Corps? You're abandoning me for the rest of my life, aren't ya? No, Sarah Palin, I'm not. But I might be traveling around West Africa (i.e., Ghana, Togo, other places) for a month or so afterwards, and then spend another month in Kenya with my family if I can manage to get Peace Corps to let me not come straight home (they book me out as soon as my time is up). Might even visit some friends (i.e., I see you, Miss Suzy Cream Cheese!) in Europe on the way back. That means, might be coming back around late March, 2014. But I'll be back, I pwomise. Thinking of doing law school afterwards, for international law, but that's tentative. After this, things might change in the life game plan!

How much do you work that you can't get on the internet more than once every 2 weeks?!?!??? I'll be working 7 days a week, accruing 2 days leave per month worked, in a place without electricity or internet. I'll be cycling to the nearest internet cafe (most likely over 15 miles away) in order to check my e-mail. I'd check in a little more often if I could.
Any other questions? Shoot 'em my way. Facebook, e-mail, mail, all good choices. Love, and next time, coming to you from my training site in Tubaniso, our training site 15 minutes drive outside of Bamako, Mali (the capitol)!

Spectacularly,
Akinyi

If I had been with a partner that I like, if I felt good with him.

Hey populace!
So, I know it’s been more than a month. A lot has happened here in Salvador, and other parts of Brazil, including me falling in love with it. In less of an exotifying way and more of a practical, I-had-to-learn-how-to-live-here way, with a dash of my-own-research helped. And my research project took up my life and is now 140 pages and not done in that I haven’t finished editing, but we’ll figure that out when I get back to the United States. So I’ll talk about the research that consumed my life and prevented me from writing here ample times, on to talking about movies, fun stuff in the apartment, apartment growth, things you should know about the world, the end of the program, and daddy time in the next post. Which is by far the most ridiculous and best time.
My research was originally on Common Factors between HIV infection and Teenage Pregnancy/Supporting Systems in Salvador, Brazil (in post You’re so IN LOVE!), which was to say that I wanted to research both HIV infection in teens and teenage pregnancy as a problem, along with partners of womyn and not just the womyn themselves that suffered HIV infection or teenage pregnancy. Basically, I wanted to be this revolutionary that finally spoke to the male perspective of these “problems” and did not base my research at all on womyn but rather on a holistic perspective of how these “problems” affect those in power, i.e. men, white people, rich people, and those who generally live a lot more stress-free than others. This stemmed from an old-time view I hold that, in order to change things, you have to appeal to those in power so that they can change societal structure enough to help the situations of those who have no power. Aside from the problem of this creating a dichotomy that’s far too clear-cut in who has power and who doesn’t (in reality, it’s a gradation scale and the problem lies in the gap and not in the idea of “power” itself, becoming a popularly dirty word in public health when in reality it’s an assertion of existence and not inandofitself bad unless it hurts others), this idea is also problematic because those “in power” should not be the ones to help “those who have none.” In what universe should the rich pity the poor? This is an extension of charity, one of the main points of Paul Farmer in Pathologies of Power. Once we include charity in government as a regular function, we also stabilize and continuously fuel the idea that those less fortunate are simply “less fortunate” without rhyme or reason, and should be “helped” out of the “goodness of our hearts,” us being the ones who have more. Not only does that separate the condition of having less than one needs to survive from societal structure and problems that those who have enough to survive cause (i.e., how many people think that prostitution puts prostitutes in bad situations and is a lowly job therefore causing these situations, wherein prostitutes get beaten and sometimes raped and threatened for their lives? How many actually support the legalization of prostitution so that government can make regulations on prostitution and assure prostitutes pay, making us, the citizenry, more aware of their rights and consumers of prostitution treat prostitutes better, and allowing us to finally acknowledge that they have a job that’s credible and frequently taken advantage of and we should call them commercial sex workers? But I digress), but it also allows us (those with more “power”) to benefit by feeling high and mighty off of problems that we ourselves consistently cause by “donating to the poor.” Essentially, fuck that shit. Excuse my language.
What I did instead was radically change my research path to research HIV infection and Unwanted Pregnancy in Adolescent Females in Salvador, Brazil. This means that I intended not to study HIV infection or teenage pregnancy as problems because these are situations in adolescence that are very sensitive and mean many different things to womyn at all different ages, but especially when they are in adolescence, a time during which they are undergoing severe developmental changes that include the development of their ability to make decisions for themselves and learn their own sexuality and connection with their bodies as a relationship that allows them a larger amount of freedom as any other they previously have had in their lives. One’s sexuality should be an exercise of choice and pursuit of personal pleasure, not only physically and sexually through sexual actions but also through the joy of knowing one’s body and loving oneself for one’s sex, sexual desire, ability to choose what one wants through sex, and ability to make associations with others that are positive concerning one’s embodiment and awareness of one’s sexual desire and being. As the adolescent learns of this large new field of ideas through which to explore their own bodies, and learns to make decisions for themselves, now under a slightly looser grip of their parents’ and schools’ control, they make mistakes. Basically, they fuck up. And that’s okay, because that’s apart of the learning process. The problem is that parents don’t want that to happen and neither do schools, which makes sense because they don’t want adolescents to get HIV, or get pregnant, or get a number of STDs, but most importantly, get hurt. Sexuality can be very vulnerable and in the process of discovering oneself, one can get hurt through the mistakes they make, by partners, their own confusion and misunderstanding or lack of understanding of what they truly want in sexual interactions, and peers with strange and/or unhealthy ideals of sexuality which they feel they must follow in order to be liked and feel like they’re doing something right. So, what do parents and schools do? Use scare tactics and don’t teach adolescents anything. And what do adolescents do? Dumb shit. Think about what you did when you were 13-19. DUMB. SHIT. Most of the time unless you had comfortable, open conversation about sex. Even if you did have safer sex and used condoms /and birth control pills, you were more than likely to have done it out of fear. And how can you use condoms /and birth control pills out of an uninformed—rather, paralyzed—intent, and call that “safer” than feeling emotionally safe as well? You see the point. Dumb. Shit.
Basically, HIV and unwanted pregnancy, in the process of all of this, can seem like the end of one’s life which hasn’t gotten a lot of fuel going yet also (adolescence is only the beginning to a big, beautiful life, obvi); a blessing in disguise as pregnancy can yield a kid and maybe you suppose that that wouldn’t be the end of your life or maybe, as one interviewee told me, her act straightened up big time when she found out she got HIV at the age of 19 and now she feels much healthier; or something in-between. They’re not problems if you’re responsible upon reception of the news and lead the rest of your life not making the same mistakes. So I did not research HIV infection and pregnancy in adolescence as problems. I researched them as situations that might be the result of a lack of holistically sexual health in late adolescents. Oh, yeah. I also only studied female adolescents, ages 15-19 in whom either unwanted pregnancy or HIV infection occurred.
How did I research? Awkwardly. Since I had been shadowing at that clinic in Santo Antonio de Jesus (in post Her family didn’t know she was a gay.), it was a swift transition into awkward ethical situations wherein I haphazardly had an introduction into peoples’ most intimate, confusing parts of their lives, told them my name, whipped out a tape recorder, and nervously stumbled out onto my little-known Portuguese in order to both take narratives (the first half of my interviews) and Q&A (the second half). It was especially awkward because my advisor was the womyn who had given a presentation with bad acoustics and in a sweaty room to my ridiculous group of students in this program that wasn’t a program (i.e., SIT), and she’s nice, but had nothing to do and has never really done anything with SIT except for give them sweaty, straight-forward presentations on what she does, which is lead everything at IBCM (Instituto Benficiente Conceição Macedo), an NGO that helps families living with HIV or AIDS and offers the daycare center to the kids, either with or without but living with family members who have HIV or AIDS, that made me really confused before (in post Breakdowns and Rescue Songs). She got paid by SIT to see me for two weeks and do the following: push me out into the waiting area of the center, where the secretary, Paula, who kind of hated me because she thought I could not speak any language and was dumb and confused, would either ask “Voce tem quantos meses? E quantos anos?” (You’re how many months along? And how old are you?) or “Quando voce decobriu?” (When did you discover [you had HIV/AIDS]?) And after that, she would turn to me and go, “Perfeito! Va e entreviste!” (Perfect, huh? Go and interview [them]!) Hence started the most effing awkward interviews of my life.
I asked questions ranging from those probing at individual circumstance and personal life, like questions about body image, past sexual relationship and questions about their safety, and personal narrative, to more general questions about whether or not they thought that female adolescents in Salvador were sexually healthy (4 of 6 said no) and what resources could help them be more healthy (ranging from more sexual health lectures and even better health campaigns than the ones that already run rampant in Salvador, to the most common and powerful suggestion that parents need to talk to their adolescents about sex more, regardless of the common shame they seem to have, influenced by both religion and, moreso, fear of their kids messing up and getting hurt). I wanted to do something that research really hasn’t done before in adolescents sexual health: ask the teens what they think. And not only ask them, but ask the ones who have been the most affected by their own sexual mistakes. Then, get a better view of their situations through narrative, and get to know if they’re negatively affected by violence that threatens both their general, and therefore, sexual wellbeing because they do not feel the capacity to defend themselves. Or they didn’t have the information that could have helped them not make a mistake. In the case of one womyn who I interviewed and was actually married and had planned her pregnancy, what she thought motivated her to make the early decision that she did to have a kid. I wanted to both know what they thought works against the informed sexual health of other female adolescents and then probe into what affected them through their stories. It was pretty amazing.
I interviewed 6 womyn. They had all been pregnant or were currently pregnant in late adolescence, 3 of them were currently pregnant, and the other 3 had been pregnant but also had either HIV or, in the case of one womyn who was 23, had had AIDS since birth from vertical transmission from her parents who both died of AIDS when she was 9. I interviewed one 16-yo who became pregnant despite using birth control pills just as prescribed (“they were too weak”), one 19-yo who became pregnant because she forgot to use a condom once with her long-time boyfriend and also forgot to use her birth control pills one or two days in a row (she’s had to move out of her house to resolve some of the tension her evangelical parents have over her early pregnancy outside of marriage), one 19-yo who’s married and planned her pregnancy (and is cocky about it); one 19-yo who has 2 children out of not using condoms and discovered she had HIV in pre-natal exams for the second (had first child at 12-yo and it was planned, weird interview); one 23-yo with 4 children who had AIDS from birth and has stopped using condoms with her current partner who does not know her status (lives in a shantytown and had her first child out of rape from her brother-in-law who would consistently beat her during her pregnancy and caused her to have the latest sexual debut of all of my interviewees, out of fear of further abuse); and one 24-yo with 2 children and HIV (did not plan either of her pregnancies and had condoms burst/did not use them and had unsupportive and at-times abusive partners, but is now married to a man who’s HIV-negative, takes her to her appointments for her condition and knows about it, and she believes that her HIV has saved her and was a “solution,” not a “problem.”) You can’t generalize these stories. They each speak to a different sexual identity shaped by external and internal factors that can give a lot of insight to public health peoples to better shape campaigning efforts and help womyn, through employment opportunities, more appreciation in society taught from birth for womyn, and more educational incentive, to both practice safer sex through their own right, responsibility, and ability, and be able to practice safer sex through better societal conditions and less relentless abusive partners or negative sexual situations.
If you want more information from me on all that, lemme know. My paper is DONE! I can send it to you. Hope that all made sense.
SO, how did that end up being 140 pages? Literature review, 40 pages. Research, circa 50. Extra BS for SIT, table of contents, etc., the rest. If you actually want to read it, I would love dedicated critique and advice. Lemme know at Akinyi_Shapiro@brown.edu or Hotrevolution@gmail.com, and I’ll send it to you. Both e-mails go to the same place and I check it pretty frequently and will respond.
I worked on my research for at least 3 hours at the beginning per day, up to 10 hours per day toward the end. And probably did irreparable damage to my back working at my laptop. As I am now. But it’s worth it to be connected to the real world.
Good things happened during research. And weird things. I’m pretty sure a worker at IBCM who would walk me back and forth from the center to the bus stop (it’s in a dangerous neighbourhood called Pernambues) had a little crush on me. And would speak to me in small-talk Portuguese because, like Paula, he thought I was a tad slow. Once he told me his name was “Jose” but people called him “Ze,” he told me I could shorten my name from “Akinyi” to “kin-YEE.” And I said that, “Yes, I could…but I won’t.” Another womyn who knew me from a large square in Pelourinho (in post First Post in Bahia!), would hold her breasts in front of our coworkers at the center and grasp them and talk about what big breasts I have and how it was because I am “American” and “the men like it here.” Do me a favour. If you’re American and reading this right now, grasp your breasts and be proud. This crazy womyn apparently thinks you’re all Pamela Anderson.
They also gave me lunch and the cook would always tell me that I should “just try” the meat. It is “so good.” It made me laugh so I didn’t want to punch anyone in the face. She was friendly.

During my research, I went crazy. I slowly evolved into a hunchback who would cook for herself and not go to the beach. Really, though. This hunchback went to the beach in view of her apartment window only 3 or so times. She jogged for about a week before giving up, which was along the beach, but no cigar. What did she do to entertain herself?
Before I got to into it, it was Miss Alex’s birthday. So the hunchback started making food for herself and Alex and occasionally others. What did I make? Everything from stir-fried vegetables with wonderful, garlicky pasta, to salads with cashews and good things, to vegetable curry (which she is now a master at), to amazing eggplant with rice, to learning how to prepare dried beans and rice (there’s a first time for everything), and various things with pumpkins and their seeds (pumpkin is quite cheap here and is a ridiculous word in Portuguese. I think it’s ‘Aborbora.’ Try saying it aloud. It’s silly).
And for Alex’s birthday, I bought a dress for myself for the first time in awhile and went shopping with her. And there were movies.
I saw 3 movies until the end of the program. The first was Deixa Ela Entrar (Let the Right One In, a Swedish movie with English subtitles, though I saw it with Portuguese subtitles). It’s a really frightening movie about a 12-yo boy who’s constantly bullied at school and make friends with a vampire his age who lives next-door. I can’t really tell you much more than that. You have to see it. But it’s really depressing. At least for me. First, I could understand most of the subtitles (GO PORTUGUESE!); second, a kid essentially throws his life away for acceptance. This was somewhat poignant as I went crazy in my program without Alex, trying to not seem like what I felt I seemed like to everyone else: a bitch who doesn’t see the “bright” side. Which I found out was bullshit. And that I’m not going to run off with some vampire because I get a little bullied. Maybe not that dramatic, but still.
The second was right after I finished my paper, in a drunken attempt to salvage some of my dignity and sanity. Dignity further lost to Lua Nova (New Moon, yes, Twilight, and yes, I liked it, so don’t make me bring it up again). There’s really nothing more to say to this than, it was a great movie to drain my mental energy into after non-stop thinking for a month and basically writing a thesis. I was far too tipsy. This was not good. The main characters began to look attractive after half an hour of me not thinking. And, snapping out of my drunken haze, I recognized my folly and could not stop. It was like a virus, a slow addiction grabbing my hypothalamus and pulling it into awful fiction where vampires don’t die in light but sparkle. I was pleased but hated myself at the same time. Don’t see it. Please, please, please, don’t see it. Also, movie was completely dubbed in Portuguese and came out really quickly after it did in the US (like 1 week later). I understood all of it, because interviews made my Portuguese really kick up. All of my program assistants and my academic director noticed, I think even more than they expected with all of us at the "beginners’" level. I felt special, but sad that it ended up with me understanding “New Moon.” Don’t see it, please.
The third and last was A Princesa e O Sapo (The Princess and the Frog). I saw it right after I presented my research to my group (joke), and the night was magical. With a margarita and French fries and fruit in my system, I ran to the movies only to find that it was also completely dubbed, including the songs, which also rhymed, and I could really understand it all. So, this movie was both problematic and really good. I haven’t read any reviews on it. But, I’d say, it’s important to me because I’m a black womyn and I finally have a black Disney princess. Still, if you’ve seen it (SPOILER! You will hate me if you haven’t seen it yet), let’s talk about some problems.
1. Even though I was trying to enjoy myself, man’s hair is straight. And not I-have-Native-American-blood-from-xyz-ancestor straight. I mean, the-makers-of-this-movie-made-other-black-characters-in-it-have-kinky-hair-but-not-the-prince-because-he’s-pretty straight. That’s both racist and ridiculous. Check out the picture if you don’t believe me.
Man’s hair is straight/white. Why does Tiana (the princess) have curly hair?
2. Um, voodoo and evil black men. This is problematic without me going further, but Disney, I know you don’t care about the exotification of black people. But really? Really?
3. Man is singing zippedee-doo-da when he’s gotten free from some white fishermen. First off, okay, minstrelsy wasn’t cool with Kenan and Kell and it’s not okay here. Stop it. Second, Song of the South? Really? You changed production of this movie so many times: from the name of the black princess being Maddy to Tiana, because “Maddy” souded too “slavish”; from her being a maid to a cook because her being a maid was too “racist” and “stereotypical”. And you have man singing Song of the South?

I’m just sayin’.
Otherwise, good movie. The ending song by Ne-Yo is legitimately gorgeous. The part where the second star joins the moon (you’ll see if you haven’t already) made me cry. You’ll like it. I do, though, have a sneaking suspicion that the movie was much more story-like in Portuguese, because I didn’t pick up on every single word and, just like a child, it painted a sweeping storyline for me which I joyously followed. On the whole, getting a movie poster for my room. On the specific, redrawing man’s hair so that he’s black.
What else did the hunchback do with her time when she could finally emerge from the shadows? She wore dressy clothes. For the first time in my life, I felt motivated in a workspace to wear semi-professional clothes, which, in Brazil, entails long pants (it’s hot, so take that in context), pretty shirts, and manners. Kini wore her manners. Along with that, I would hang my head out my window and look at something like this:
See that white apartment building peaking out of the trees? Yep, that’s me. And the air smelt like love every day. I really thank G-d that I had to write a thesis at the same time as I was living on the beach. Otherwise, the hunchback would have stayed in the shadows of her thesis for the rest of her life and never smiled again.
Aside from that, there were 2 restaurants that made my life meaningful. Tudo Azul (All Blue) and Fogo Azul (Blue flame). I think Tudo Azul came first. Anyways, both owners speak English, so SCORE. I had forgotten how incredibly reassuring it is to speak to someone with the confidence that you will be completely understood the first time. Saying something like, “Do you have mango juice?,” is far more exhilarating in Portuguese, but makes you feel far more stupid if you get it wrong. And at Fogo Azul, they would make me vegan eggplant Parmesan (remove the Parmesan, put in garlic, give Kini rice), which was amazing. They’re this really nice black couple, one from New York and the other from Los Angeles. And all of the black people who have ever spoken English in their entire lives go there if they’re in Salvador. It kind of gave off this soul-food-in-NY vibe that I’d been missing. And once, they gave me the “Awesome Customer Discount” of a free Caipirinha. They’re basically the Brazillian drink, and I was set on them for life. No, really. They met my father. Also, I met people there that I would really talk to. About nice things, like where they’re going, why they’re here, their life story, and everything else required in an introduction from The Iliad. I learned all this nice stuff about people and then we parted ways. It was really therapeutic because it was either them or my computer, and as much as I like macs, they don’t smile back at you.
It was at around the second week of my research that I discovered cuba libres and açaí. Cuba libres, for those of you that don’t know, are rum-and-cokes with 2 slices of lime. They are divine. And my saying, which started in Santo Antonio de Jesus, is that, by the end of the drink, you really want Cuba to be “libre.” Maybe it already is. But still, the crushing under the first lime slice of the proletariat under the second crushing of the bourgeoisie's imagination, that kind of thing can do something to you after an hour or so. There was also: açaí.
This is kind of like pinha, the fruit that I will forever enjoy for you when I’m in Brazil or other lovely tropical places (apparently called Custard Apple in English?). Açaí is the purple stuff with bananas on top of it and granola to its left just itching to jump inside of it. It’s cold, and kind of has the consistency of sorbet, except it’s so much more. It’s kind of like when it’s cold outside and your parents just got you a warm blanket, made you hot chocolate, are making you your favourite type of cookies and your favourite TV show comes on and they kiss you on your forehead and go, “Have I ever loved you so much? Here’s $50 for being you, kid.”
Açaí is good. It got serious. The womyn who was always working there got to know me. And I would have nervous breakdowns. Like, after my first interview, I came home after my hour-long busride each way, after having worked myself up incredibly for a womyn who was far nicer than she had to be with my Portuguese, and took off my pants. Both of my roommates were in the living room. One is a man. I took of my pants when they said hello and asked if one of them wanted to go to the beach. I didn’t say what happened. And then we made daiquiris. Because Kini had begun to go insane. The interviews were really stressful, not to mention transcribing 45 minute to 1.5 hour interviews in Portuguese. And after some, like the 16-yo who said that she hoped her partner would pull through and help her with her child but said she was afraid for the future, I just went home and cried. But first, I would get açaí. And the womyn who worked there would ask me what I wanted smiling. And I would say the afrodisiaco (aphrodisiac, with peanuts and cashews ground up and other wonderful things like guava juice). And she would save me again and again and again.
I also made people take me out on dates. Two, to be exact. My crazy friend Christina knew some girl named Jorgia from Couchsurfers. Couchsurfers, if you’re not in the know, is a network of people wherein you can stay on someone’s couch for free when you travel somewhere. It’s awesome. They don’t pay for your food or anything, but it’s an exchange that allows people to travel more easily and cheaply, which you should be able to do if you genuinely want to explore this wonderful world of ours. And you can host others in return at your own place. Look into it. They even have divisions for queer people. Doooo it. Anyways, I asked this Jorgia if we could meet up and was surprised that she had written to me in both English and Portuguese. She invited me to a party, which I nervously went to with one of my roommates, and, after talking to enough people, found out that the party was both a Christmas party (weird for Jew) and that nearly everyone spoke English at least as well as I speak Portuguese. Then, I found out that it was a present-swapping, Couchsurfer Christmas party. And that was weird. Everyone was too friendly and all about meeting people and small talk. But also free food. Which we gladly took and then, after an hour, waited outside for a bus for another half hour and let me experience what it’s like on a barren street to have people think that your male roommate is your pimp and you’re a sex worker. Over 5 times. At least the food was free.
On the other date, I got taken out by a Fulbright and a Fogarty scholar here in Salvador to Rio Vermelho. Again, they paid for my busfare there and taxi back, acarajé (a Bahian food, fried and wonderful), and over 20 large bottles of beer for us to share over 6 hours, from 8pm to 2am. The night before my paper was due. And they spoke English. Downside: the Fogarty scholar was pretty much the most unpleasant guy I’ve ever met and made me cry talking about politics. It was really bad. I felt uncomfortable after about 2 hours but the Fulbright was nice so I stayed. I just got pretty attacked for not having a solid political stance and being moderate, because I told the Fogarty to believe in what he wants to but with a wide perspective. Yes, I mocked him a bit. No, it wasn’t okay to end up cursing and yelling at me about how I “don’t know shit” and how, “If it was between China and the US, China’s fucked up, and I’d be a proud patriot behind the US any day.” Negative. And I dressed up all for naught. But whatevs, again, free food.
The other date I had in Salvador was with the Dia de Consciência Negra, a day on November 20 with extends to an entire week here in Brazil, totally dedicated to black “awareness.” It’s really interesting.
What’s interesting about the day of black awareness is that it’s commemorated on a day of commemoration for Zumbi. Zumbi was a former king in Angola before he was transported as a slave to Brazil and then, in Brazil, after dutch rule had just ended, he organized a slave revolt and got captured by the current ruling party, and was decapitated by them. Thus, the day of black awareness is poignantly celebrated on the same day as his murder by government. And it’s interesting, therefore that government officials come to speak.
I went with a roommate who had her project more specifically on black empowerment in Salvador, and heard a “Zumbi” chant starting from one of the blocos (celebration floats) that literally gave me shivers. It was strange. I wanted to take a night off from work and go see something miraculous, inspiring, hopeful for being black in a city that’s the largest black city outside of Lagos, Nigeria. Especially in a place where, though black people make up over 83% of the population, white people dominate all overseeing employment. I wanted to hear something to hope for and make me feel like apart of a community dedicated to something even more powerful than what we already are. But what I got was a drunken celebration of sorts with radio-morphed voices chanting ‘Zumbi’ and crowded streets harassing my roommate because of how pretty she is. Which is all fine. It’s just not black awareness and creativity.
We walked into a semi-speech area on the street and stood for about an hour in order to hear Lula, the president of Brazil speak about black awareness, after a problematic speech by the CEO of Petrobras (a big Middle Eastern company for gasoline that has essentially dominated gasoline and petroleum in Brazil) about the illegitimacy of the state of Israel in its politic decisions, though that’s another story for another time. Lula gave a fiery speech, passionately calling for the day when hopefully, though he cannot promise it within his term, black youth will be able to realistically aspire to be professionals, like doctors and dentists and lawyers some day. And how important it is to see awareness as the ability to observe the black lack of opportunity in Brazil, and, this year (the day speakers rotate each year) in Salvador, the black capital of Brazil. He pounded his hands on his podium and it was important that he was so animated. But, these were all ideals. I think it’s great that Lula is publicly conscious about black struggle and lack of opportunity, especially despite the fact that he is not black, but he’s a good enough politician to have done even more than he has already. He’s done Bolsa Familia, a program that essentially gives money to the poorest 11 million families in Brazil each month and allows them to either spend it on food and transport for their kids to school or save it up and start new businesses. Positives of his during his term is that he was a poor worker, thus representing that large social class in Brazil, he has already reached the UN goal of halving hunger by 2015 through programs such as Bolsa Familia that they’re already implementing in other places all around the world, including New York City, and their AIDS programs through SUS, their universal health care here, have kept AIDS prevalance rates at bay. But he could do more, and I refuse to accept the “we’re trying” excuse and rhetoric when he, as a well-founded politician, can do better than that. And I left the speech feeling really frustrated. Around me in the speech area, it also seemed evident. There were maybe 200 hundred people around me to hear their president speak. I’m not saying that Lula hasn’t done a lot and isn’t a good guy. I’m just saying that I left the speech thinking that some day, over the rainbow, I’ll have aesthetic standards of beauty in society that will somewhat match black faces in Brazil. And that’s simply. Not. Good enough.
In summation, I got through SIT by dedicating myself to my research, and I have to say, if you’re dedicated to doing research that you think will change something in this ridiculous world, SIT will give you a jump start on Grad school and help you find amazing contacts to help you do what you’re doing. As in, would not have been able to interview the people that I did in the United States without a formal IRB. I got a special one that SIT got for me. And I also wouldn’t have had the ease with which I did my project here. It really was relatively easy to collect the information that I did, and I feel like, in the case that I want to follow through with this research in the future, it would make sense based upon the amazing jump off that I got. Kudos to SIT on that. I just hated the coursework before because it was absolutely pointless. The reading helped me in my project, and seeing a survey of public health professionals who gave semi-lectures was interesting, but the majority of the time, I was left frustrated, upset, and sometimes appalled with their lack of ethics in what they felt license to show us (AIDS patients in hospital beds that we peak at through their slit windows? Really?) and some of the complete disconnectedness between lectures and what we’re supposedly reading. I hate the fact that I wasted my time for 2 months, but loved the Village Study and my research. Because for me, both of those things were relevant to what I am interested in in public health. Screw survey courses and weak language programs that don't properly place people in levels which they are actually at to begin with (my teacher actually called me "rude" to two students in my class, out of 4, after I made a polite suggestion about stepping up the pace in class for all of us)—you learn when you’re dedicated to your work. I’m happy I was dedicated. At the goodbye party, my host-mother, who I had had so many bad experiences with, cried when I left to pick up my daddy from the airport. The womyn who had given me such a hard time when I had not understood that I should bring a separate set of white clothing for the Candomble ceremony, who I ended up having made laugh at a joke and had thought that that was a big accomplishment, sobbed when she walked me out to the other assistant's car and told me to have a happy holidays. I ended up really making some fabulous friends and progress on this trip, despite its setbacks. Or being in some peoples' lives in a generally, more positive way than I had thought I would. I really am happy that I was dedicated and stuck it out in order to see the positives of it all: my program, my life, my social well being.
AND, things you should know about the world, as dictated by me, are to like your life and feel good about it. That’s kind of what I tried to do here and I think what I really took away from my time here. Because half way through, this program didn’t matter to me. My research did. This is where the title of this post comes from:
“Se foi com parceiro que eu gosto, se me sentei bem com ele” (If I had been with a partner that I like, if I felt good with him.)
The 23-yo with 4 kids, AIDS that she doesn’t disclose to anyone, and a partner who she told me would kill her if he found out that she had AIDS and gave him HIV, told me that it’s all about feeling good. And honestly, her life is far from spectacular. She may also frame her standards today off of her past rape and physical abuse. But she has found something that I believe is very important, and that’s the ability to recognize that your happiness comes first. She was the happiest person I interviewed, and despite any struggle I went through here, and any time I really wished I could leave this ridiculous “study abroad” format, I found that the only person that can truly make me happy is myself. I have to let other people more into my life. So I made myself some vegetable curry, went to the movies, and am now happy with my humongous paper. The key is to feel good.

I can make you undetectable

Hey populace,

I recently returned from the interior of Bahia, out of my room with Alex into my beautiful apartment, as promised, in Barra, with my bedroom to your left. The beach is right across the street, and pictures will be posted of that tomorrow, with all of the pictures I've promised before form Brazil. Basically, I had to spend another night with my host-family before leaving for my apartment in Salvador, which was really awkward and uncomfortable, but only insomuch as I recognized how little we had in common and also how much I had grown from staying with them. There are some things I really value that I realized only in my home-stay because I was not happy. Which kind of reminds me of how Langston Hughes did not write when he was happy. I want to say that that's why I have been blogging, but I haven't been that much, nor have I been writing poetry, nor am I as good as Langston Hughes. So nevermind.

My mom bought me some of my favourite vegetables that I've had in Bahia, though, which was awesome in comparison to pizza, salad, pasta, and mashed potatoes in disguise. The mashed potatoes here are sometimes made with another grain that kind of tastes like butter and tapioca with a few potatoes. It's odd and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Santo Antonio, in general, was really good, mainly because I actually got to see a clinic similar to the one I'd worked at this past summer and think about it for 1.5 weeks. And go to the beach, and think about what I need more to be happy. And that was really important for coming back to an apartment where I cook for myself and run my own appointments for my ISP and basically live on my own. This is the first time I've lived pretty much separate from my family in most ways. I've never actually been in a situation where I needed to do everything for myself, and this is really good for me because I'm realizing, beyond my home-stay teachings, the bare basics of comfort for the Akinyi Aquarius.

I've been making food, starting with going back to vegan, regardless of the fact that it's a little harder than being vegetarian here has been. For those of you who don't know, when I'm outside of the United States, I usually am vegetarian and eat dairy and egg because it's easier and less expensive than being vegan and a lot of the ethical reasons I'm vegan don't apply as much outside of the US (i.e., investment in the dairy industry, mistreatment of chickens, cows, and goats while procuring their products, etc.). But, after Arun died, I tried to think about what was important to my body in terms of how I can better make it an instrument of my mind. And one of those things was being vegan again, because I really enjoy it, even if it means...especially if it means making my own meals. Cooking just feels good, you know? Making what you eat is really satisfying. I've made vegetable curry (coconut milk is really big here), vegetable stir-fry, salad, and my famous, amazing vegan pancakes (this time with bananas, apples, walnuts, rum and love). And pasta. Hey, everything counts.

I've also tried to start doing some exercise again recently, which is easy to do because I can jog by the beach every day. The beach is literally in view from my window. The pictures of the apartment don't lie (in post Her family didn't know she was a gay.). And I'm thinking about trying to swim a little every day, and take advantage of this beach as much as I possibly can. Becuase it's beautiful. And I'm lucky to have it here, especially while, particularly if you're at Brown right now or somewhere else cold and with little sun, you wish you were me. I can't blame you. It's great to be me :-).

I'm probably going to get 4 interviews from pregnant teenagers this week, which I'm really scared about because of my little (though bigger than I give myself credit for) command of Portuguese and the sensitive matter of the interviews. I don't want to make these kids feel like they've done anything wrong, but, at the same time, I'm looking for similarities between HIV and pregnancy in adolescence in order to make a semi-guide for womyn to be more sexually healthy by knowing how to avoid HIV and pregnancy, assuming that they are public health issues. How do you navigate an interview like that without seeming righteous and mighty about what they should not have done? I don't see pregnancy or HIV as morally wrong actions, but I certainly don't think that they are positive. It's a hard line to walk.

I'm going to be going to the market here hopefully by the end of the week, because they have cheap vegetables and exotic fruit :-). It's called Feira de Sao Joaquim, and it's apparently so meat-ridden that, if I wasn't vegan, I'd become it after going. Fun, fun, fun!

The most interesting thing that happened at the clinic back in Santo Antonio de Jesus was the reason for this title. During one appointment, I shadowed Veronica, the pharmacist, as she discussed HIV and other STIs with a young man who had had inconclusive test results for HIV. This young man, in his early twenties, wanted to donate blood, but had had three HIV tests beforehand, one inconclusive, one positive, and one negative. He had also had unprotected sex with most of his sexual partners for the past year, giving the excuse, when prompted by Veronica, that he either “trusted [his] partner” or “did not have the time” at parties to get condoms. He was unaware, as many patients were who I had seen in appointments, that unprotected sex could spread so many STIs, and did not understand what HIV was. Veronica explained that, since his tests were inconclusive, he would have a final confirmatory one done at the clinic that would be more accurate than the others he had taken, but that there was a chance that he was positive, especially considering the unprotected sex he had had. With this in mind, she told him that he could not die from HIV, and that people could live a long, happy, and healthy life before they have AIDS, which is a chronic disease—and not a death sentence—that results from HIV. As the young man dropped his head in his arms and began to cry, she assured him, “I am a pharmacist, and I have more than twenty medicines for when you get AIDS that can keep you alive. I can make you undetectable.”
What does it mean to assure somebody that you can make them undetectable? A modern-day superwomyn, with only a couple of repetitive forms in hand and a pharmacy, can make someone “normal” again, make their disease seemingly disappear, with the only side effects being from the medicines they will have to take. No one deserves to hold their head in their hands and wait, wondering whether they will ever be normal again, and I guess, in a way, when you're undetectable, you're "normal" again. Being undetectable is when your viral load of HIV is undetectable and, therefore, looks the same as that of someone without HIV and AIDS. But isn't it negative that, in order to be normal, you have to be unrecognizable?

Everybody should be happy every moment of their lives that they can be recognized for more than what they have to hide. Because I can assure you, the people I work with in clinics are the same as we are, except for the fact that they might be on ARVs and occasionally feel like their lives were ruined because of some stupid mistakes.

It made me cry when he got negative test results. Because I really didn't want to be him and I knew that that was wrong.

Her family didn't know she was a gay.

Hey populace,

So, a lot has happened since last updated, as always. First and foremost, see that dingy hotel to your left? Well, it's got wireless internet down the hall from my room, pushy men who watch soccer and steal seat cushions from the lounge when they're drunk, and televisions with badly-dubbed Xena the Warrior Princess. And I call it home here in the interior of Bahia, in Santo Antonio de Jesus. And I like the very queer waitresses at the Lua Cheia (Full Moon) Restaurant, and the fact that pizza is your only vegetarian option besides salad if you go out at night. Because I got it like that.

I had been wondering what "Village Study" meant in the series of my trainwreck program, and have now realized that, to my academic director's benefit, it is the first time here that I have learned something from scheduled activities or classes. They have set all of the students up to observe/intern at certain health centers semi-concerning their independent projects, and I have thusly been assigned to work at the CTA, a health center in this city which works specifically, in my corridor, with HIV/AIDS, Syphilis, Hepatitus B and C, and, occasionally, HPV. The center essentially gives out lab test results (but only after they wait 30 days in order to send and get back the results from 3 hour-away Salvador, because smaller cities don't deserve laboritories with testing capacity...except with Syphilis [?]), offers a psychologist for counseling regarding test results and social support with the aforementioned medical conditions, has a doctor/gynecologist that can do examinations, and rapid HIV testing along with a considerable concern for lunches lasting from 12pm to 2:30pm. I have sat in on everything from Hepatitus B notifications to the state to mentally disturbed HIV patients who harass nurses to negative Syphilis results to HIV/Hepatitus tests following medical accidents in nearby hospitals. And seen viral loads galore with near-minimal ethics. And been tested and given drugs essentially udner-the-table by angry doctors who storm around and won't do physical examinations on patients because of a lack of air-conditioning. And it's pretty insane.
Along with seeing gruesome pictures of STIs in a teach-in for nurses and hearing doctors say that "womyn have never sexually transmitted HIV to other womyn in the history of the world...and AIDS is arbitrarily defined by viral load and is more of a social term than anything else because our definition of AIDS is 100 points higher in viral load than anywhere else in the world" [350 vs. 200-250], I've just been having a dandy time picking out all the problems with not identifying peoples' sexual identities past the past 12 months of their sexual activity, identifying marijuana as a drug on par with heroin and crack, and having limitations on the amount of condoms one can receive for free per month. I've been learning juicy stuff.
And the nurse I work with answers the phone consistently during appointments for 5 minutes just to say that she doesn't have time to talk on the phone because she has appointments. The universal health system (SUS-Sistema Unico de Saude) is kind of like an idea people thought up on Sesame Street.

Ernie: Hey, Big Bird, everyone should know that it's okay to cry!
Big Bird: Yeah, Ernie, and we should have universal health system too! With testing and stuff!
Ernie: Good idea! Let's learn about the number 3!

And then they turned Cookie Monster into some freak who likes to eat apples, and I still looked weird when I had a good cry in public, and Brazil's health system was a dramatic social divide between the poor and rich, North and South, and substandard and expected, idyllic care systems. And so it goes, Vonnegut cried.

At night, I stay with an amazing queer girl from Smith named Alex, and we watch The L Word every night and occasionally grab a beer and run it like it's 'sposed ta go in the interior. Which is kind of like living in a slightly gayer version of Michigan for 2 weeks. But I digress.

I want to show you all my apartment (SNAZZY), which is here: http://www.bahia-online.net/newyork602.htm. Check it out. I'm gonna be staying in Bedroom 2. And yes, I know, it's beautiful and you hate me. Go ahead. Hater.

The hardest part of staying here was Halloween, because Halloween in Brazil is kind of like Carnaval in the United States: uncelebrated. Except by kids, who, according to the nice assitant here, "...love it because they get to wear things and get candy." Which is sad, because I do too. So, Alex and I dressed up (I was a hippy, and she was straight), bought 2 things of M&M minies and 2 serenatas (chocolate/doce de leite goodness), drew pictures of monsters and scary things, and watched Pulp Fiction on my bootleg version on my computer and got shwastey-face. And it was kind of like Halloween. Because we drew pictures of strangely-proportioned witches and caldrons and pumpkins and monsters. And Alex was straight, which was scary.
So I hope someone out there enjoyed Halloween for me and actually had a costume (I was going to follow my usual suit of being a republican whore and be Lula in drag, but I figured that progress is progress and I don't want to get myself shot in the interior of Brazil. Or a slightly gayer version of Michigan), like I enjoy pinhas for you.

I miss pinhas.

Also, credit to this post title goes to Alex, who, in describing the awful plot of The L Word (or, I'm gay, rich, and confused in Los Angeles), said "uh" in such a way to talk about the character Jenny, as "a gay".
Tip to readers: If you say "a gay" in front of me, I'll punch you in the face. Unless you're talking about I'm gay, rich, and confused in Los Angeles.

If we could paint more colours on our walls

Hey populace,

I've been wanting to write this past week, but thought it would not be appropriate without mentioning someone who profoundly touched my life, steered it in a direction I'm forever grateful of, and is one of the only people I have ever truly respected.
Things slipped in to place quite suddenly because of him.

A really close friend of mine, Arun Stewart, died in a freak accident last Friday, the 30th. He was going to a party in Beijing, China (he was studying abroad) on an apartment rooftop, and he lost his footing and slipped and fell and died. Just like that. One instant, there. Another instant, I'm sure he was dead without a pulse or form.
And at first it really upset me because that's a stupid way to die. He was going to a party, for G-d's sake. And he had done rooftop parties a thousand times before, to what he'd told me if I remember right. And he lived almost right across the hall from me my freshmyn year at Brown, and taught me what music was, and made me think about so many things (as I made him think about a lot of stuff too, and generally called him out). He was just an amazing guy, and he was a really good friend of mine, which he may never know. I even tried to (and maybe, possibly had some lovely part in) set him up with one of my other close friends at brown. But I talk about him all the time, even here in Brazil. And he was really important to me at brown.
So I was really upset about it, and couldn't make sense of it. I've never had a close friend die before. I could always hear him banging out on his bass guitar and making awful music with his friends, and he basically introduced me to smoking and thinking, and showed me some of the most beautiful lyrics I've ever heard. He would sit me down in his room at Brown and show me songs that he just knew I would love, and we'd talk about it, and eat lunch, and not once, at any point, did I feel pressured to say something around him, or be his friend. He was one of the most accepting people I've ever had the privilege to be around, which is hard for me to admit, because I'm tough to impress at times. But he genuinely impressed me with the amount of things he taught me and made me think about and showed me.
He loved rap music, and one of the songs he showed me was an amazing song called "Don't Ever Fucking Question That". And it, especially after I heard, made me realize a lot of things about myself through his influence.

"Enough to hold you to the brightest of lights, to place you dangerously close to that sun, enough to acknowledge the flaws you can't ignore and recognize the cause of what's done is done, more than enough to put my name behind my ideals,
and neglect my logic twice daily..." - Don't Ever Fucking Question That, by Atmosphere


What I took away from him was that life is too short to be bothered. By yourself and the limitations you impose on yourself and your dreams, by people around you who bring you down in your own glory, by your surroundings which are nothing but crafted by G-d. You can't be bothered, and you should always put into your body, do with your body, and relate with your body what drives your wildest dreams. Because you can "dream a little dream or you can live a little dream, [and] I'd rather live it, 'cause dreamers always chase but never get it" ("No Regrets", by Aesop Rock).
And I wanted to ask G-d all of these questions. Like, what happens to people when they die? And who's in charge of the universe when all of the bodies have to get swept away from peoples' memories, like crime scenes, no fingerprints but only memorial services, no suspects but only receptions and songs that remind you of conversations you had a long time ago. I don't have many answers, only guesses.
But I also wanted to tell everyone exactly how much they meant to me from now on.

So, I'm sorry if I haven't kept in touch with some of you as much as I should have. The reality is, I thrive on good conversation and quiet magnificence in company, and I get anxious about planning it, or forgetful, and don't get around to that e-mail, or that phone call at times. But I really appreciate my family and my friends. And I'm truly and sincerely dedicated to fixing that from now on. So please, know that if you fall into one of those two categories, I really do love you and care about you. I spoke about Arun so much while I was here, and I had not even really spoken to him more than a paragraph in the past year we were at Brown together before he went abroad. But my friend Amina even told me once that he must have been important to [me], wasn't he? And he very surely was. He gave me a hug the last time I remember seeing him, out of nowhere, without saying anything, and I almost started crying. It meant the world to me. And imagine, if I spoke about him a lot and didn't even talk to him a lot, those of you who are close enough to me to care about what I'm doing here, I surely think about often. There's just too little love that I've given out over my short time in this world in order to expect what I receive, and Arun was the brightest of lights, and I have spent most of my time agonizing over the things I haven't done and the flaws I carry, while I lack the reflection of what I could do in that same time to help what I love the most.

I love the people who help me in my life, of which there are many.
And I love the right to love, and the right to be happy, and the right to live without worrying about what you need.
I really love the world that we live in, and all of its capabilities for truth, and compassion, and care, and we shouldn't ever, ever fucking question what the world has to offer us and what we can do in it.

I love you, Arun. Rest in peace with everything you've ever been and will become in the future of our universe.


If only I could paint more colours on my walls to make a better picture of everything you meant to me. You just can never paint acceptance, you feel it. You never were a sentence to me, not one lyric you showed me, not one sentence you gave me, not one caution you proved to me, never once did you stop giving me ideas to use, and mangle, and put back together as if they were my own.
You lived more in 21 years than I have lived through every powerful person I know, every piece of logic I try to prove, you recurred in my poems more than you did at my shows, and you were every colour I can think of.
I never expected to cry after someone died after my mother, because she meant the world to me. And maybe it still wasn't the same. Maybe I cried with her because she wouldn't be there for me, to care for me, to do what mothers should do and be around for their daughters. With only messages on the internet as proof for you being gone, I cried for who you are and what an absence of every colour you ever spoke that I felt when you left this physical world. You were more intelligent than I wanted you to be, and more persistent of a person with your voice than I could ever hope to be, so thank G-d that instead of sentences, I have ideas, and instead of colours, I have memories of what you sounded like when you lived around me. I'll try to paint wherever I go with the dreams I'll live, instead of wonder what it could have been like to dream more.