Fun in the Tanzanian Sun: Bovine Edition

Todos Santos, Mexico

Andrew and I are in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico. I'm not the sun worshipper I once was, except in the yogic sense. But I still appreciate that Todos Santos is everything you could hope for in a beach getaway -- piles of mangos, fragrant and sticky sweet, gold-speckled beaches, and tacos stuffed with buttery fish and shrimp. There's a special bonus in our version of paradise: Mario, from Mexico city but a longtime resident of Todos Santos, can serve you piles of just caught yellow tail for your sashimi dinner and then teach you how to surf before lunch the next day. Any teacher who can coax me to standing on a surfboard in less than 20 minutes has a special gift (photographic evidence to follow). The goddess of small things is busy here in Baja!

Dr.

Against all odds, I became Dr. Huang a few months ago. Not the kind of doctor that can help with your migraines and back pain, but the kind that can wax quixotic about the human condition -- its joy and suffering, its sameness and difference.

I don't write much anthropology these days, and I'm sure I've lost all of my credentials as a blogger. Still, I'm not saying goodbye. I'm putting my toe back in the water because I miss writing about the small things, like the way a steamy dumpling can be pure happiness.

In August, I'll be on vacation in Mexico and will be on high alert for the gifts imparted by the goddess of small things.

Paused.

Oops, it's been more than 6 weeks since I last blogged. Here's why: I'm meeting with the professors on my dissertation committee next week. I wish I could say that I spend my free moments cooking gourmet meals or training for another race. Instead, I've been sucked into the world that is the Huffington Post. It turns out that I have an opinion on Michelle Obama's wide belt. Politics aside, the answer is "Hit...so stylish!"

I don't know when I'll be back, but don't give up on me. I promise this break is for a noble cause. Or at least one that will save you from repeated posts about writer's block.

Kitty Love

My sister described this perfectly: Jamieson wants to get close, very close, to his fuzzy new friends, but hasn't figured out the best way how. I leave the life lesson to you.

Emergency Anthropology

There aren't that many jobs out there for an aid worker/anthropologist. So many thanks to Michael Kleinman for letting me make the argument for Emergency Anthropology on his fun, high-traffic blog. Michael is the humanitarian relief blogger for change.org. (Aid, fun? In the right hands, yes.) Click here and bookmark!

yes we did

I ran my first marathon.

Katharine reminded me that just a few years back I called marathoners certifiable. The very same Katharine who I convinced to run 26.2 miles with me this past Sunday (her fourth marathon) and who at one point put out her hand to pull me along (my jog was threatening to peter into a walk). That's friendship: I call you crazy and then rope you into my craziness and then make you cheerlead so that I can finish the craziness. I heart Katharine.

I wasn't sure I was going to start the race much less finish it. A few weeks ago, I hurt my foot during a run. So my recent training consisted of hours on the elliptical listening to romance audiobooks. Not exactly what Hal Higdon had in mind. But even if I had been in better shape, I'm pretty sure I would have nudged close to my physical limit. At mile 13 I was high on endorphins. At mile 16 I finally understood the meaning of low-blood sugar. At mile 22 I was counting my breaths between bouts of cursing my goal-oriented self.

When we stopped for burritos after the race, I had to use the handicap grab bar to lower myself onto the toilet. I'm still limping and downing ibuprofen like there's no tomorrow.

So, what did I learn from this arbitrary test of physical endurance?

1. I have amazing friends. Greg picked me up at 5 am to take me to the starting line. Ryan R drove the devoted crew around the city and handed me a shot of Gu at a critical point. Ashley was in command of logistics and, with her usual sunshine, raised the crowd's cheer quotient. Ryan E took a break from bar exam prep to give us high-fives. Summer held up a poster while executing Laker-worthy high kicks. As Ryan wrote in his account of completing an Ironman (2.4 mi swim, 112 mi bike, 26.2 mi run), "There’s a special place in heaven for those who cheer on marathon runners. And Summer is the mayor of this area of heaven." Rebecca, Meredith and Ellie joined us for a mile or two at just the right moment, i.e. when it was my turn to entertain Kath with stories but could no longer simultaneously jog and talk. And Evan, dear Evan, ran alongside me in jeans and a sweater around miles 25 & 26, when I could only grunt in response to the much-needed enthusiasm. Kath's parents, Brian and June, hosted a celebration BBQ afterwards. Thank you!!

2. It's more 'mind over mind' than 'mind over matter.' It was painful when I hit the dreaded wall (twice), but much worse were the moments that I allowed myself to ask...what if? What if I walked a bit? What if I hadn't told my thousand best friends about my plan to run? What if I'd bowed out due to injury? I had to continually bring my mind back to the moment, to the task at hand. This is more than the New Agey power of positive thinking, though sometimes you need a booster of that too. To finish a marathon you need to cultivate mental discipline, a skill I find more difficult and valuable than its physical counterpart.

3. Well, I wouldn't be me if there weren't some meaning-of-life lesson too. The Buddhist version of 'death and taxes' is that we cannot escape old age, sickness and death. And, no matter how far our medical technology advances, there will always be pain. In Buddhism, you learn through practice and observation that we also always have a choice towards it.

The Buddha once asked a student, "If a person is struck by an arrow is it painful?" The student replied, "It is." The Buddha then asked, "If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?" The student replied again, "It is." The Buddha then explained, "In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. This second arrow is optional."

To face pain with grace takes a lot of practice. I'm not encouraging people to seek it out; we're surrounded by enough material as it is. For me, though, it's helpful to have a physical activity as training grounds for bypassing that second arrow. It's also key to have amazing friends along the way (see #1).

Have I signed up for the next marathon? No, my body is still feeling exactly how high-impact running is. I told Katharine that I miss cross-training and that we should consider a Half Ironman. She says that even she's not that crazy. We'll see about that.

saving muslim women, again

I have an aid-related pet peeve – when someone justifies an argument and/or intervention by making a gesture toward “saving” disempowered Muslim women. This trope has a long history: offenders include French colonials in Algeria and former First Lady Laura Bush before the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Like any humanitarian aid worker (and most others), I think there are compelling reasons to help vulnerable populations. But we also have a responsibility to carefully consider the how and why. We should be particularly vigilant when humanitarian and military goals become intertwined.

This is all a way of saying that my peeve-o-meter hit zone red when I saw Thomas Friedman’s recent column on education in Afghanistan. After saying that he’s not sure the Afghan war makes sense anymore in strategic terms, he finds the silver lining:

But when you see two little Afghan girls crouched on the front steps of their new school, clutching tightly with both arms the notebooks handed to them by a U.S. admiral — as if they were their first dolls — it’s hard to say: “Let’s just walk away.” Not yet.

Friedman is writing about the opening of a school built by Greg Mortenson of “Three Cups of Tea” fame and the US State Department. The opening was attended by Admiral Mike Mullen, the US chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. It’s a harmonious image of the military, non-governmental organizations and diplomatic forces joining hand-in-hand to empower Afghan girls. Friedman’s image of a commanding officer giving gifts to crouching, clutching Afghan girls feeds the old trope: Western might saves oppressed women from corrupt anti-moderns and religious extremists. He goes one step further to argue that the school reminds us of the essence of the “war on terrorism.”

It’s about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.

Let me be clear that I support the education of Afghan children and I admire Mortenson’s work. But that sentiment is exactly what enables the sleight of hand: the Hallmark moment makes us feel good about conflating humanitarian, military and moral missions. Rory Stewart, a professor at Harvard, argues that this conflation prevents us from proposing more minimalist and realistic goals in each realm. Is it really for the West to create the space for an Islamic progressive movement? Friedman argues this was one of the aims of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if anything, the wars have reduced the legitimacy and sway of Muslim moderates. Pakistan recently announced its opposition to a surge in Afghanistan because it would push extremists into its own territory. During my fieldwork in Xinjiang, China, many Uyghurs cited the Iraq war as evidence of American hatred of Islam. In my view, they were sad and angry in near equal measure.

It’s a mistake to think that the outcome could have been different if the development budget were a little bigger or the military intelligence a lot better. Regardless, US security interests are not coterminous with the concerns of Muslim progressives, humanitarian organizations or Afghan girls. To treat them as such will lead, at the very best, to disappointment on all sides. Stewart writes:

Indeed, at times it seems that all these activities – building a state, defeating the Taliban, defeating al-Qaida and eliminating poverty – are the same activity. The new US army and marine corps counter-insurgency doctrine sounds like a World Bank policy document, replete with commitments to the rule of law, economic development, governance, state-building and human rights. In Obama’s words, ‘security and humanitarian concerns are all part of one project.’

This policy rests on misleading ideas about moral obligation, our capacity, the strength of our adversaries, the threat posed by Afghanistan, the relations between our different objectives, and the value of a state. Even if the invasion was justified, that does not justify all our subsequent actions. If 9/11 had been planned in training camps in Iraq, we might have felt the war in Iraq was more justified, but our actions would have been no less of a disaster for Iraqis or for ourselves. The power of the US and its allies, and our commitment, knowledge and will, are limited.

To Friedman’s credit, his following piece acknowledges that we have limited time, money, soldiers and aid workers. But he doesn’t yet see that at issue is not only the limit to our will and resources, but to our wisdom as well.

land of lincoln

My dad and I just toured the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. The multimedia shows are impressive. Lincoln's ghost, gangly yet regal, appears in three dimensions on a stage set with library shelves and presidential artifacts. The floor shakes during civil war battles and John Wilkes Booth's deadly shot. But, thankfully, the special effects aren't a crude attempt to remake history as blockbuster entertainment.

If any man deserves hagiography, it is probably Lincoln. Yet, one of the two productions takes special care to give voice to his critics, and not only the pro-slavery ones. We hear the indomitable Frederick Douglass call Lincoln out for being less than an abolitionist (the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in Confederate territory). We hear, too, those who questioned whether unity was worth the human toll (by the end of the Civil War, more than 600,000 soldiers had died). The side-by-side photo comparison of Lincoln in 1861 vs. 1865 is striking. Apparently, a sculptor who saw a cast of Lincoln's late-war face insisted that it must have been done postmortem.

As we were driving toward downtown Springfield, my 82-year-old uncle grumbled in Chinese, "There are so many blacks around now." My mom glanced at me to see if I was going to pick a fight. I stared out the window. I considered 'What Would Lincoln Do?': "When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a 'drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.'" I love my uncle dearly but he does not have a sweet tooth to speak of. My mom stepped up and teased, "We have a black president and you're still saying things like that?"

I imagine that every person at the museum today reflected on our current president while walking through the exhibit on slavery and emancipation. In 1860, there were 4 million slaves in America: 1 out of every 7 people. For me, the photograph of the whip-scarred back and the replica of the slave auction block were not the hardest to see. I had more difficulty looking at various documents declaring ownership - reward posters and receipts of sale. Yet, here we are, 150 years later.

Obama invoked the Land of Lincoln in his recent speech at the NAACP convention.

And because ordinary people did such extraordinary things, because they made the civil rights movement their own, even though there may not be a plaque or their names might not be in the history books -- because of their efforts I made a little trip to Springfield, Illinois, a couple years ago -- where Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged -- and began the journey that has led me to be here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Because of them I stand here tonight, on the shoulders of giants.

dignity.

In January, I blogged about a Sri Lankan journalist who knew he would be killed one day for revealing the atrocities of the long civil war in his homeland. He wrote a letter to be published after his assassination - a letter, as Steve Coll from the New Yorker wrote, "[that] is like nothing else you will read today, that I promise." I was reminded of it while reading about the recent execution of Natalya Estemirova.

Ms. Estemirova was a fearless human rights investigator in Chechnya.

She wandered the ruined republic wearing a skirt, blouse and heels, lipstick on, carrying her purse and presenting a straight face, perhaps warmed by a slight smile, to masked gunmen and victims alike. She could seem as proper as a chief librarian, ready to add to her archive, both on paper and in the mind, which revealed the Chechen wars for what they really were. How did she dare?

This was Chechnya, after all, a world of violence so sinister it can be difficult to describe in a newspaper. Thugs dominate this land. Experience has taught them that fear will reliably bend opponents to heel. Who was she to chase them? Why could she not be convinced to quit?

The answer is now written, though everyone who knew her knew it long ago: only death would stop her. All her friends could do was trust her to dodge it, as she had, somehow, for years...

She was, improbably, a one-woman parallel government, providing services the real government was unwilling to offer. She found the incarcerated. She hunted for hidden graves. She built cases against perpetrators, even when she found, as she often did, that they wore government uniforms.

I wonder if Ms. Estemirova left a letter for her loved ones and for her people. Regardless, her legacy is clear: political strongmen have no armor for hard facts and the dignity she embodied. (Thus, they must attack, even knowing the opposition's ammunition is unlimited, intangible.) There is nothing passe about speaking truth to power. We can't all be heroines but we all need them.