This is why you should exercise

Why we have earthquakes

AP file photo

So..this is why we've been having so many earthquakes lately. Apparently, women can make the earth move! ;-)

Food talk: Busboys and Poets

A name like Busboys and Poets is bound to get a double-take. At least, it did for me. I walked past this snazzy establishment one fine Tues evening. Later that week, my housemate tells me that it should be on my ‘Things-to-do-in-DC list’. So today, I set out to scratch that off my list. Mission: to take my friend K visiting from Beantown to a fine DC establishment in an effort to show him what stuff DC is made of (and in the process – discover DC for myself! Ha!)

So..much has been written about this place (dang, if there’s a Wiki page to something, no need to reinvent the wheel, ya know?) so I won’t go into the humdrum of what this is. I’ll simply give my own impressions and hope that I win over more business for this place. (Not that it needs it..it seems to have enough word-of-mouth advertisement going on!)

I got the Grilled Brie Panini with spinach, caramelized onions and tomatoes on ciabatta bread. K got a burger with gorgonzola cheese, and the regular stuff that goes on a burger. I liked my food. What I loved better was the burger that my friend got! YUMMY – I never knew gorgonzola and moo (aka beef) went SO well together! This is definitely one that I'm going to try creating at home! (Thank the good Lord for sunny weather and backyard bbqs!)

What I loved the best though was the ambience of the place – the resto is a coffee-house-lounge-bookstore-restaurant. People come here to work on their laptops (yay! free wifi!), drink coffee, enjoy some libations after work, check out their books, listen to poetry being read or simply come out to eat. Definitely an interesting place! Would love to go again, if only to simply read on their comfy couches and people-watch! ha! Check it out if you’re in DC. :)

Musicka - The Summons - John Bell

Heard this song last year at church...powerful words. I love the reminder to always be obedient to God, no matter what life throws my way.

Will you come and follow me
If I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know
And never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
Will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown
In you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind
If I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind
And never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
Should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer
In you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see
If I but call your name?
Will you set the pris’ners free
And never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean,
And do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean
In you and you in me?

Will you love the ‘you’ you hide
If I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
And never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found
To reshape the world around,
Through my sight and touch and sound
In you and you in me?

Lord, your summons echoes true
When you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you
And never be the same.
In your company I’ll go
Where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow
In you and you in me.

All things nuclear!

Living in the nation's capital comes at a price - you gotta contend with the city shutting down when 40+ heads of state descend on your town!

The subject - all things nuclear.

In one of the largest gatherings of heads of state in history, President Obama invited more than 50 presidents/prime ministers to discuss how to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent acts of nuclear terrorism.

The city hasn't seen this large a security curtain since Inauguration Day. It is said enough downtown streets are to be closed to cause two days of gridlock! All I can say – watch/read the news to see what action steps result from the summit. And thank God for ‘working from home’!

All talk..

So..it's been an interesting time since I got to Washington, DC to work as a project manager for a small Christian NGO on reproductive health/family planning grants. In the short time I've been here, I’ve met congressional staffers from Senators and Congressmen’s offices, met a Senator (!), participated in high-level meetings at USAID, met with the vice-president of a multi-national public health company. It’s amazing who you run into here. My next-door neighbor for two weeks was the Chief of Staff to a Senator!

In the whirlwind of meeting and being introduced to ‘important’ people..and learning how to talk the talk and walk the walk, I’m realizing that there’s a lot of TALK here! On a daily basis, I participate in at least one conference call or go to a meeting where people get paid BIG money to sit around a table and talk! Makes me wonder...how much the talking is helping. How much difference is it making on the ground..in the life of the child who is suffering from hunger and the woman who couldn’t get to the nearest health-clinic on time while giving birth, and the man who has to make a choice between food and medicine for his family. Really...how much difference does it make what old white men sitting in air-conditioned offices in Washington, DC say?

Am I jaded already, you may ask? I don’t think so...at least, I hope not. Am I wary of all the ‘politics’? Heck yeah! But I am here. As wary as I may be, I am here to do a job – and do it well. I am called to bloom wherever I am planted, so I hope to bloom. Hope to speak for those from the field who may not have an organized voice, and may not have glossy paper reports but do do good evidenced-based public health work from a faith persepective. Wish me luck! :-)

DC Life

So folks, I'm now in DC! My endless roaming around this planet has to come to an end someday...and it shall soon, but for the next few months, I'll bask in our nation's capital. It's weird place, I must say. Here's some random observations to date:

• DC's Metro is incredibly efficient! After living in Boston, it seems to be almost sinful to have a subway announce it's arrival in spans of minutes!
• Speaking of the Metro, I love the architecture of the underground stations. Very snazzy. Although, I'm not the biggest fan of the LONG escalators going down underground. My fear of heights come in full-swing every morning!
• Black. It's everywhere. This city has NO sense of style! Aiy..yai..yai. Everyone wears black coats, black suits, black heels, black skirts, black everything! I mean, don't get me wrong, I think black is cool. But come ON, people! Where's the sense of style and color?! I'm no fashionista but I do like to look pretty. Almost felt like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde in my non-black clothes.
• Clean. In contrast to some of the places, I've lived in - this seems to be one of the cleanest cities. In fact, it's a sin to eat or drink on the Metro! I remember landing in New York from India and walking around in Harlem and thinking THAT was clean. Ha!
• Personalities. I haven't quite made up my mind on this one yet. Still wanting to be proven wrong on my initial assessment that DC attracts certain personalities. And it's almost incestuous how everything is related to politics and development. I'm so not sure about wanting to be a part of that world...
• Layout of the city. The grid of the roads and the layout of the city is incredible. Makes it easy for newcomers to find their way around.
• Spring in DC is BEAUTIFUL!! :)

We'll see. This city is yet to woo my little heart. Will keep y'all updated.

Happy Pi Day!

Pi Day

Happy Pi day!

Go ahead..be a nerd and enjoy some pie today! ;)

Quotable Quotes

Random sentences that have made me laugh..

If I can navigate around cows and dogs and their respective poops in India, I can make it in anywhere!

- ha!

You just don't stink. You stank! (insert ghetto accent)

- my sister's trying to tell me something.

You are so much more than a grant-proposal. You are a person!

- an attempt to cheer up a friend

You don't know John Legend??! Have you been living in a cave? Oh..wait, India IS a cave!

- again, my sister trying to say something. (I'm ignoring her..ha!).

Devina: What day is it? The fourth?
Emily: Yup, the fourth.
Devina: Of July?
Emily: That's a holiday. You know if you weren't brown, I would think you were a blonde.

- enough said.

Devina (singing at the top of her voice): Sweet Alabama... oops, I mean Carolina.
Emily: You mean Sweet Caroline?"

- Again, enough said.

His Timing. For My Good.

Why does God wait till the money is gone? Why does He wait till the sickness has lingered? Why does He choose to wait till the other side of the grave to answer prayers for healing? I don’t know. I only know that His timing is always right. I can only say that He will do what is best...Though you hear nothing, He is speaking. Though you see nothing, He is acting. With God, there are no accidents. Every incident is intended to bring us closer to Him. (Adapted from Max Lucado's Grace for the Moment)

Depend on the Lord; trust Him, and He will take care of you. (Psalm 37: 5)

While I have trouble trusting in these truths on most days, I do know that things always happen in His timing. And for my good.

Oye!!! Merry Christmas!

Since I missed out on the holiday season this past year...

a friend saw it fit to send me the above video! It's now stuck in my head..and I see it fit to share the love! Enjoy!! :)

Oh...how much I missed thee.

Dear Cinammon Swirl Bread, It is good being reunited with you. Sincerely, me.

....and in no particular order, some things that I have enjoyed this week since I got back from India...

1. Cinnamon Swirl bread (the Pepperidge Farm kind..with Smart Balance butter! Yum!)

2. Plush couches (the kind that you can actually sleep on!)

3. Hot showers with water pressure that actually creates wind in the shower!

4. Dark green salads out of a bag that won't make me sick

5. Phone customer service representatives that actually know what they're doing

6. A kitchen! To make my own food - just the way I like it. (not that I've actually done any cooking thus far)

7. Momma's tender loving care. Got sick on the trip back and have been unwell since I landed. Its nice to be taken care of..

8. Basil-mozarella-tomato sandwich. Been eating this non-stop! You'd think I'd want some meat. Go figure.

9. TP in public bathrooms. Gone are the days where I carry my own personal stash of TP everywhere I go.

10. Netflix. I can play catch-up on my TV-less state and watch some good ol' movies/TV while sipping on whatever culinary goodness my mother conjures up to nurse me back to health.

11. Internet. I get to use 'unlimited' internet as opposed to 'pay-per-use internet'. Which means, I get to stalk friends gloriously on facebook when I should be job-searching ;)

...in short, I'm a fallible human being with a propensity to be gravitated towards the luxuries of life in America. Yes, living in India was wonderful - for all the experience had to offer. But being back is good, too. :)

Back home!

'Welcome to the United States of America'.

Something about these words at the immigration post on Newark International Airport on a cold dreary wintery Saturday morning had a soothing comforting ring to them. I was back. After a short stint working for an NGO in India, I was back.

I could write much to reflect on the past year - could fill tomes on the experiences, the work, the sheer joys of helping people, utmost periods of loneliness away from family and friends, the beautiful places that I saw, the delicious food that I ate, the many conversations that I had with the wonderful people I met, and the sheer diversity that is India. Great life experience - as a friend recently told me. I wouldn't trade it for a second!

But for now, I'm glad to be back home.

Yes, I said home. America has strangely become home in the short time that I was gone. Kenya will always remain home - place of my birth, and India will always remain the country of my roots, but America is now my home. And I'm glad to be home..where those that I call my own live.

To give or not to give

I landed in India in late August. Almost immediately...all five senses were tantalized. From the plethora of food options that teased my taste-buds, to the smells and sounds (talk about the ubiquitous honking of cars!) And the sights! India is a beautiful country...with mass disorganization and chaos, but with raw beauty and warm people. To say that India is capable of bringing out every single emotion out of you is an understatement.

One of the sights that has haunted me since I landed in this wonderful country is the sight of children begging. I took the picture above many moons ago.

I cannot reconcile proximity that stark poverty has to ultimate opulence. To see people living in shanties on the sides of roads in Mumbai and the sight of little ones with tattered rags in New Delhi doing little tricks in the hopes of procuring a few rupees simply breaks my heart. And right next to the largest slums in Asia are high-rise apartment buildings with every single amenity that money can buy. I had read that the divide between the rich and the poor is great here – but to see it in actual terms is quite disconcerting.

And mentally – I still haven’t reconciled what to do when a child comes up to me to beg for money. What is the best thing for that child – to give or not.

Does giving away money serve as a temporary solution akin to a bandaid over a leaky faucet? Or does it serve an immediate need to feed an empty stomach? Or does it simply sooth our conscience that our daily quota for a ‘good-deed’ was met?

Growing up in Kenya, even as a teenager, I used to pack simple sandwiches whenever I went out to give away to anyone that came up to me to beg for money. It was so deeply ingrained in me that money could be potentially used for things other than basic survival tools (such as drugs, etc), that food was the best option to give.

Extreme poverty is such a complex issue and tackling it from any one angle requires much thought. Do the said-beggars in places like India and Kenya even have a choice to do something other than begging? Or is structural violence so deeply entrenched that a vicious cycle of poverty and lack of access to basic needs such as food, clean water, and education do not facilitate ability to do anything else but beg?

I think of donor agencies who give development assistance to resource-poor countries in various forms – food aid, technical assistance and expertise, hard money, etc. How is that different from a single person giving a few rupees or shillings to a single child? Therefore the ultimate question, does giving serve to encourage a culture of begging and dilapidate a person so much that they feel they do not have a choice but to ask for help? Or does it truly help to meet some basic needs?

Having been here five months – I am still nowhere close to the answers. As I continue to work as global health professional in India and beyond, my ultimate aim is not only to set up new projects, but to ensure sustainability of any work that I do. To train capable people and transfer knowledge to ensure that someone can do the work that I do after I leave. Knowing that I do not have all the answers and do not understand the complexity to local problems in the global context, I choose to give.

Praise you in this storm

This song has provided much comfort to me over the years...

and most recently while I live in India.

Delhi, India

Random shots from my trip in Delhi, India.

Nov 2009

Why people honk in India

My first few weeks in India were full of new things. New sights. New smells. New sounds. Particularly taxing was the sounds emanating from motor vehicles (everyone from truck drivers to motorbikes to auto-rickshaw drivers).

Honking. Everyone does it.

I sought to understand why people do it so much. Now, three months into living here, I came up with the following list of hypotheses as to why the Indian (and non-Indian alike!) has to be assaulted with the daily sound of a vehicle-horn. Please note the following is based on my own observations. Any resemblance to any traffic laws that may or may not exist is purely coincidental. ;-)

• One honks to signal that they are about turn left or right
• One honks as they are approaching an intersection to warn incoming traffic of their presence on said-junction
• One honks at the behest of signs such as this one above
• One honks to alert other drivers of intent to overtake
• One honks as they perform above-mentioned act of over-taking
• One honks on a curvy mountainous road to alert on-coming traffic
• One honks to shoo livestock off the road
• One honks to shoo pedestrians off the road (mind you, pedestrians have an equal right on the roads. As the sidewalks are usually filled with dog poop, humans take it upon themselves to simply walk on the roads, hence yet another reason to honk).
• And finally, one honks in place of the classic road-rage “I’m about to flick you off” gesture.

In other words, honking has taken precedence over all traffic rules. What I fail to understand is how on earth the average driver is meant to distinguish between honks. As in – if I were driving, how am I to decipher whether the dude/dudette behind me is honking because she’s annoyed at my driving or honking at the cow on the road...or honking to let me know that s/he is about overtake me?!

Let’s just say – I’m thankful that I don’t have to get behind the wheel and drive here!! I’m more than happy simply sending up prayers asking that the rickshaw driver won’t get me killed! ;)

Things I’m thankful for

“Black Friday sale!” “75% off deals” “Save..save..save”

These were just a few of the emails that landed in my inbox this week. Reminded me of another world approximately 10-13hrs behind my current time-zone. A world where shopping and buying and accumulating ‘stuff’ takes over the minds of every sane person.

I feel like I’m in an alternative world right now. I mean, as I’m typing this – there are children dying of diarrhea (a relatively simple disease with low-cost remedies) and there are people spending enough money on gift-wrap that could feed an entire family for months.

Living in India definitely has its ups and downs – I can’t seem to get past that. At times, I feel at home here. And many days I can’t wait to get out of here. I’ve definitely grown in different ways and alternatively there are things that have remained stagnant. But this post is not about the crazy thought-world of Devina. It is about the holidays.

While I feel like I’m a world away from the holiday season (India doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving – which marks beginning of the craziness that is the Christmas holiday season with all it’s commercial glory), I am also looking deeper to realize what the holidays mean to me.

While I have actually traditionally hated Christmas since I moved to the US, (I could write a whole another blog post on why!), this holiday season – I’m reminded of so many things to be grateful for. I’ll attempt to list a few here – in no particular order.

• My mother: I could write a book on her life and all the lessons that she’s taught me.
• My sister – my little sister is one of my best friends. Though we hardly talk much – the little Googlie bear is growing up fast and teaching me a lot.
• My life in the US: I appreciate the niceties in the US – living in India has taught me to appreciate even the simplest things like hot showers, clothes dryers, green salads and clean water.
• My friends – I have people in my life that I call my own at varying levels of intimacy. I pray for a lot of them on a regular basis and am grateful for them.
• The opportunity to travel – I have been blessed to grow up in a developing country, move to a more developed country and have an opportunity to go back to work in a developing country. While the upheaval with each move was not easy, I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.
• Ability to speak four languages – I’m SO grateful for my language skills, and ability to pick up languages, especially in India! It comes in useful when haggling with the auto-rickshaw drivers. Ha!
• Spices: I love to cook! Mainly because I love food. I’m lazy about cooking for myself – but love to entertain and have people over. Living in India has been in living in food heaven! I’ve been tantalized with every possible spice combination!
• Education: There was a time that I would have laughed if you told me that I’d one-day have a masters degree. I’m grateful for the schooling that I have received. Especially when I see how much thirst for knowledge is there in the people around me.
• My Lord and Savior Jesus: who continues to be there for me in spite of who I am. Who teaches me on a regular basis how to live fully, how to laugh often and how to love sacrificially.

I hope that this year's holiday season is a meaningful one for you – wherever you may be. Either sitting in cold wintery weather, or hot sunny tropical weather. I hope you are able to take a few breaths and step back from the commercialization that the holidays have become and look around you. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘Whenever you’re faced with a doubt/difficulty, look into the face of the weakest/most vulnerable person that you may encountered. Ask yourself - is my next step going to benefit them or better their life?’. Things will be clear and you'll learn how much you really DO have..

Happy Thanksgiving!

Acclimation and identity

Two months! I just said to a friend! It’s been two months since I got off the plane and landed in Bangalore, India! I don’t know where time has flown, but I can say this one thing: It’s been fun! Full of ups and downs, but fun nonetheless.

Living in India has definitely taught me a lot – I normally do a lot of thinking and contemplating about things on a day to day basis, but being here has kicked my thinking cap into over-drive, much to the consternation of my close friends who have been great sounding boards during my time here. While I try to figure out this first-time-living-overseas-without-my-family-thing, I have appreciated SO much all of you who have called/emailed/facebooked and sent me thoughts in every so often in every small way.

While I am acclimating to life here, understanding my role at work a bit better, getting to meet new people, I still miss home a lot. It’s funny because I never considered America as home...I always thought Kenya as home. Perhaps it is because I have never stayed in one place long enough to strike down roots, or perhaps because I never identified myself as American.

Strangely enough, I do think a lot like an American. In my interactions here with Indians, I do come across as an American. And while I completely get the Indian mentality and way of doing things and even though I introduce myself as a Kenyan living in the US, perhaps a little bit of the US of A has rubbed off on me. And I’m learning that that is okay. (Talk about tri-cultural confusion!)

And while I am enjoying being here, and experiencing all the new places that I get to see (India is SUCH a beautiful country!), all the new people and cultures that I get to interact with (I get to hang out with Singaporean, Filipino, Swiss, Rwandan, Tanzanian AND Chilean people at my church!), I still look forward to going home.

Perhaps it is because my family – my closest people – are over there now. And home is always where the heart is…

As I write this, I am listening to one of my favorite artists – A.R. Rahman. In the background, I hear the dogs barking, the train hooting, and the cars honking. Life here definitely has its fair share of chaos, and India is a great testament to that! But I maintain that there’s peace in the midst of the chaos. Learning to look for that peace in the middle of the chaos can be challenging at times. Especially when nothing seems to go well. But learning to take each day as it comes and live it to the fullest is worth doing.

More random musings later…

Aaahh...Technology Gripes!

So I love being in India so far - it's crazy as heck at times, and many a time I have wondered what I'm doing here. I feel very misunderstood in most of my interactions with peeps here. And at other times I love it here - especially when I feel like might have some sort of impact on some individual somewhere.

This past month and half have been full of ups and downs - perhaps more downs than ups. But I always look for learning opportunities and try to make the most of every situation and 'not complain too much' but life here is VERY different. Simple things take forever to figure out. Take, for example, this wonderful invention called the Internet.

So, I am currently renting a room from a family. Living in another person's house - under someone else's rules - is definitely interesting. For example, I have a 10.30pm curfew. For the record, I've never had a curfew since I was a teenager. It's definitely interesting - especially when I'm (now) starting to make friends here and want to go out and such. The other thing is internet. This family have their own high-speed (wireless!) internet connection but refuse to 'share' it with me and want me to get my own connection. Given that I'm only here for less than six months, I'm finding it a tad difficult to get my own broadband internet connection!

But no worries - I'm the queen of 'research' so, after a month of being here, here's some options I found - I could get a data-card and connect remotely without a land-line. Oooo..but where do I get one? Endless hours of research online, and some help from peeps in my office resulted in a few names of companies that have data-card options. BUT, here's the catch - out of the five companies that serve the Bangalore market, only one has a data-card that fits my budget and has speeds above 256kbps (most of you who are reading this in the US have a standard T1 cable connection with speeds upto 8Mbps!) 256kbps is painstakingly SLOW! On top of that, most companies have a limited use data-cards. Meaning you have a limit as to 'how much' internet you use! Aiy yai yai!

But, no worries - I'm persistent and keep searching. Finally (by fluke), found a company with a datacard with UNLIMITED (woo hoo!) usage and a data-card that'll give you UP TO 2Mbps! (the 'UP TO' is very much bolded/underlined in their promotional material - which gives me reason to believe that I'll probably be accessing much slower speeds. :(

But no, worries - I'm all about finding out how to get my hands on this card. So, I had found out about this via a tele-marketer! And I was like 'yes! hook me up!'. He even came to my home for to check out the data-card but then we realized ONE more glitch! I have a Mac!! (I'm ready to cry at this point!!) And he doesn't know anything about the driver for the software compatible with my computer. He went away saying he'd find contact me again. That was Tuesday. A whole week has come and gone, and I haven't heard back from him. :(

But, no worries - again, online research is my forte, it seems! A few hours (again) on the internet today YIELDED results. I figured out which model of the data card, which company manufacturers said-card, and WHERE on the world-wide-web to find the driver for Mac OS X Tiger!! I have to say, I AM the bomb! I found it! BUT..(there's always a 'but'), I lost the phone number of Umesh-the-telemarketer! So I now I don't know where to buy the card and sign up for service! :(

Next step of research process is to figure out WHERE to buy/rent this dang data-card. I think I'll figure that out next weekend. I love how people here all tell you what to do, but don't seem to know WHERE/HOW to do said-thing.

Okay, I'm done complaining for the night! ha! I suppose this is really good test to my brain-cells. And you, my dear reader, the next time you complain about a dropped call, 'slow' internet, government beaureacracy, or ANYTHING in general, think about 1.1 billion people in desiland. Most of whom have WAY bigger problems than my internetlessness state. Hopefully, I'll have grow some patience-cells in this microcosm of a land, and learn to appreciate life. Life in all its gory and glory. Adios for now. ;-)