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Week 11

Spent the week in Arniston, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. It’s a small fishing village on the coast of South Africa where the ocean water is light aqua blue, the houses are made of white limestone, and dogs roam around free. There’s one hotel, three churches, maybe two restaurants (that don’t look much different from the houses so easy to miss), and no other markets/stores. We looked at the stars at night when walking back from the hotel where we congregated for wifi, ran through some sand dunes after class (even found a bone in there), and found a crazy beautiful cave where water runs through and opens back up into the ocean. This community has been so hospitable - everyone knows everyone, and when I asked my host mom for the address in case we ever got lost, she said we can just ask any random person in the village where Doreen/James lives and they’ll take us to their home — didn’t quite believe this at first, but she was right. We got to spend several days hearing from different people who live here - school headmaster, clinic staff, community health workers, domestic workers, fishermen, and youth. The opportunity to just ask people questions about what they do, what they think, and how they live is such a privilege.. we got to do this for entire days of class to start getting a picture of Arniston as a resilient community and not just a beautiful beach town. We learned that the only available sources of income are either fishing or working at the hotel (or for a holiday home), so unemployment and lack of opportunities for youth is a serious issue. This community runs on fishing - it's the only historical fishing village left in South Africa, and the increasing government regulations on fishing (i.e. requirements for permits, restriction of areas on water) has taken a huge toll on the fishermen, their families, and the entire community. When we first got here, I didn’t think it was all that touristy for how freaking beautiful it was, but there are actually holiday homes all throughout Arniston that get rented out. Some of the women, if they don’t work at the hotel, get hired as domestic workers to clean these places (for pretty low wages). Tourism provides employment, but its long-term impact on communities like Arniston is questionable, especially with the residents having to fight threats such as the foreign hotel owner wanting to buy out the entire village. It is so beautiful how much pride these people take in their village, and how much they’ve fought to keep the culture going despite the politics against them. Will never forget Rovina, the community rep for the Fisherman’s union who reminds me of like a matriarch (she’s so passionate and has such a friendly but strong presence), my host mom Doreen who goes to the hospital in Bradasdorp every week to pray for the patients there and who dreams of traveling to help more people, her daughter-in-law Aresha - one of the two community health workers who has such a beautiful spirit and love for her work (despite low government wages) because she gets to help people, and Eben, who was around for the entire week’s program and talked to our case study group about his experience as a gay person in Arniston + his belief in living an authentic life. The whole community knew about us being here and was so welcoming - people would say hello as we walked to class and give us directions if we ever needed. Some came in to our class (which we had in one of the churches everyday) - they came to answer our questions and tell their stories, and they came to listen to each other and to visitors (like the province-level politician), a few others were around to translate and show us around the entire week. Aresha even found her community health worker training packets and gave them to me to look at in the home, because we had asked questions about that in class earlier in the day. What's still crazy to me is that they were not only accepting of us, but grateful for our presence in Arniston, and our interest in learning about the workings, the history, the challenges, and the hopes of the community members. Throughout the whole trip many of us felt bad that we were having all these experiences and learning so much from the people we met, without being able to give anything back, but our country coordinator told us that what we could give, if anything, was our genuine interest. Because it means something when people come to meet, listen, and learn, and when they care enough that they can take these stories back and allow them to be heard. In Arniston and the townships we visited, their parting requests was that we share these stories back home, and I still think about how I can best do that.

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Weeks 9-10: Cape Town

- Scalibrini center

- Went to Khayelitsha for a day. Khayelitsha is a township that began in 1983 when people were thrown out and started building informal settlements to stay with their families. We were hosted by a man named Tembi (pretty sure that’s not the correct spelling) who our country coordinator has known and worked with. With a welcoming spirit and bright smile, he told us about his community, which “people only know bad things about”, but he sees so much resilience and courage that he “wants to promote Khayelitsha for the good things” and see his community uplifted. For context, unemployment, overcrowding, crime are all realities in Khayelitsha.  - African healing systems guest lectures - Lion’s head and cape point

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Week 7-8

- Landed in Cape Town and spent our first 2 days at a really nice hostel in Sea Point, which is right by the water and reminded me so much of California… the palm trees, ocean view, the roads, the beach houses, biking by the shore, the thrift stores, the diversity of food options, we were pretty thrilled (but also i was conscious of and a bit uncomfortable with why people were so happy)

Then we arrived in Salt River, which is a suburb not too far away, had a neighborhood tour, and met with our homestay families. Salt River is not a white community and is therefore very different from Seapoint. We were repeatedly told to never walk alone, never walk at night, and never have our phones visible in public because muggings were not uncommon and often targeted at foreigners. Nadia (who gave our neighborhood tour with a one-of-a-kind humor) explained that a lot of times, people are approached by teenagers/children and asked to hand over their phone and money at gunpoint.. it’s sad how much of crime is rooted in poverty. Feeling this unsafe isn’t something that I’ve experienced before, but I learned so much about crime that I wrote a whole paper on it. (an excerpt from Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime which i’m listening to on audible and am completely obsessed with: ) - My homestay in Salt River is really nice, we mostly interact with the mom (Navi) who’s really chill and has not stopped roasting me about my 5 hour nap (and overall sleep dependency) since day 1. She has five children, one of who lives in the home, and several grandchildren who pop in once in a while. There’s also a nameless cat who jumps on my bed every morning and falls asleep - first time having a cat around and i’ve decided that i like cats - Overall it really feels like we got picked up from Vietnam and dropped off here  because it’s a different world in so many ways: i.e. safety (Vietnam was super super safe and I walked around alone a lot), language (we are speaking English again which obviously makes this feel less “foreign” but this also means we have to be more critical), religion (most of Vietnam is not religious, while we are staying in a predominantly Muslim community in Salt River), race (Hanoi is racially homogenous while race shapes the entire social/political/cultural/physical landscape in South Africa), weather (we were constantly sweating in Vietnam and now constantly shivering here in Cape Town and it does really make a difference), sense of community (Salt River is a close knit community and people really know each other because they either grew up together or built relationships as neighbors, while Hanoi was an insanely bustling place where this wasn’t really possible), etc. I’m glad for these changes because it’s made the characteristics of each place more salient, and helps me to not take the place I am for granted. 

- Apartheid: Pretty sure all I could say about this before coming was that South Africans were separated by race under a racist government, and it was dismantled when when Nelson Mandela became president. Not untrue, but obviously there’s so much more that American history classes (unsurprisingly) skip: some more excerpts from Born a Crime bc i can’t quote trevor noah enough ”As the British empire fell, the Afrikaner (descendants of Dutch)rose up to claim South Africa as his rightful inheritance. To maintain power in the face of the country’s rising and restless black majority, the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools. They set up a formal commission to go out and study institutionalized racism all over the world. They went to Australia. They went to the Netherlands. They went to America. They saw what worked, what didn’t. Then they came back and published a report, and the government used that knowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man. Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control.” “The ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country, with every black person stripped of his or her citizenship and forced to live in the homelands... but this so-called white country could not function without black labor to produce its wealth, which meant black people had to be allowed to live near white areas in the townships, government-planned ghettos to house black workers. The township was where you lived, but your status as a laborer was the only thing that permitted you to stay there.” To this day, the races are still segregated in Cape Town and all around South Africa - we are staying in a “colored” community in Salt River, and blocks away was Obs, a “white” community. We went to the District Six Museum one day after class - District Six was just one of the neighborhoods in Cape Town from which people were basically kicked out and displaced under the apartheid government. A mostly (but not entirely) colored community, the government forcibly removed everyone living there after declaring it a “whites-only area” and bulldozed the place down. (They didn’t even rebuild, they just wanted the land cleared.) The people were “dumped” outside Cape Town to an area known as the Cape Flats, where informal settlements were built for survival. To this day, the Cape Flats and the other township areas are associated with drugs, poverty, and crime. In the District Six museum

Lwandle - migrant workers Immigrants, uber drivers

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Week 6

- This last week in Hanoi was a blur... on Sunday night (after we came back from Ha Long Bay), it’s after dinner and our host family tells us that we’re doing gifts at 9:30, which got me all sentimental a full week before we were actually leaving.. The gifts were customized pillows with our freaking pictures on them - mine said “so cute Celine”, and Heather and I were in shock for a good 5 minutes before we commenced a photo shoot in their room.. I’d never forget this family and this homestay experience anyway but this pillow guarantees that.. complicated my luggage situation a bit, but probably one of the most thoughtful gift i’ve ever received, and i’m gonna get all nostalgic every time I see this back home - Had a bunch of assignments due (every one of which I decided to start past 1am on the day of deadline).. One of these was an ethnographic paper where we basically were supposed to walk around the city and make sense of the space by documenting little details and assigning meaning.. I fell in love with the city all over again doing this, it’s kind of beautiful how people become their own authors of public space and start owning it as they see fit - i ended up near a lake and people were sitting on step stools (that they use at restaurants as well) drinking beer and had their own makeshift restaurants on the grass area and i feel like you don’t ever see this in urban American cities but i love it so much.. interesting how “unregulated” this business-scape is, in a sense because Vietnam is technically still under a "communist” gov - Also had a group case study presentation which we logged some coffee shop hours putting together.. (cong caphe has this coconut blended iced coffee which we were all obsessed with.. and a really nice bookcase aesthetic.. so literally all of us were in there working on case study on Thursday afternoon) Our case study topic is “psychosocial and emotional well-being” which everyone has been calling mental health because that’s essentially what it is.. so we started out with questions about whether people feel depressed/anxious and why and how they deal with it, but quickly realized that depression and anxiety aren’t concepts in vietnam, and tried to replace it with words like sadness/stress (which also didn’t really work because it just isn’t “normal” to think about these things). I was familiar with this frame because it’s where i come from - which was the beginning of a set of epiphanies about my background and cultural roots.. our western notion of “mental health” is quite medicalized, but i don’t think this means that the non-western views should be seen as “backwards”, as much as i’ve experienced it negatively in the past. It took some processing, but we found that people, students specifically, view stress as normal (which it is) rather not pathological, and therapy/counseling isn’t considered until it’s a serious mental disorder where the person clearly cannot function and go about everyday life - which is also subjective, i realize. Our in-country faculty were actually working on a research project trying to test the effectiveness of a workbook in helping people deal and cope with their depression, moving toward the set of beliefs about mental health that we’re familiar with at spaces like my school and many other American areas (not so much my hometown, i don’t think).. For our case study project’s sake, we pretty much abandoned the focus on mental illness which really wasn’t transferrable, and started thinking about mental well-being - how do people find meaning and happiness in their life? - a more universal concept than “depression”.. the people we interviewed were very diverse, and we interviewed them for different reasons - students at Hanoi Medical University (to learn about their thoughts/knowledge about psychiatry? which wasn’t very productive lol), a bunch of people in the Thai and H’mong villages (to learn about their lives!! see last post), the director of a psychiatric hospital (to learn about what care for mental illnesses looks like and how people in general approach it)… so our preliminary “conclusions” were very broad, but i think the most valuable takeaway was that we really need to step outside our own frames and put on a new set of goggles to understand people from their own frames of reality on what everything in their life means (or doesn’t mean) to them - Another one of our pretty obvious conclusions was that stability (in terms of external conditions) is necessary for positive mental health - like stable family life, stable job, stable home, etc… which is so unfair how many people don’t have this. But I also thought about lots of cases of depression i’ve encountered that could be attributed to over-stability? stagnancy? idk what the right word is but i’m thinking of people who have a “stable” life but want more in life and feel stuck and become depressed because they need change? i realize it requires a lot more privilege to fall into this state, but I also don’t think it should be downplayed due to its context. probably not something we’ll dig into in our case studies (well who knows) but this is of personal interest, as well as the biology behind it - On Saturday I had planned to go on a day trip (to Ninh Binh) for boats and caves and sightseeing, but I decided against it and stayed in Hanoi because I wanted a final day to be in the city and finish crossing things off my list. So I went to this cafe in Old Quarter called Note Coffee where sticky notes covered every wall, every table, every square inch of ceiling.. i wish i could’ve stayed here for a full day and read as many notes as possible.. loved reading cliche quotes and love letters and random weird bits from people all over the WORLD like what a concept... I sat here and felt like I was in 20 places of the world at once.. it was like an organically created museum of traveling humans :’) - I’d planned to spend the day exploring Hanoi alone but that morning, Gwen - our lovely program volunteer / case study translator messages me asking if I’m free and asks to hang out!! So we met up and she took me around on her motorbike to her favorite food spots so I could try things i haven’t tried yet (had the most amazing fruit desserts), and we went to the Temple of Literature. We had such good conversations that I’ll probably never forget -- we talked about literally everything, and it was actually incredible how much we had in common. She’s perfectly fluent in English, which she mostly learned through watching American movies / reading books, and because of this she understands and actually identifies with American culture a lot? which I thought was really interesting. Didn’t know this before, but she’s also fluent in French, (even more so than English), she started working for a (pretty big) travel agency this year, but before than she was a language teacher while she was going to school. She wants to get her Master’s next year either in France, Canada, or Switzerland - this gives me hope that maybe we’ll meet again soon, but until then I promised myself that we’ll keep in touch and be pen pals :’) - Saying goodbye to Hanoi was so hard, I didn’t realize how attached I got to the environment and to the people. When I was asked which country I was most excited for, I said either South Africa or Argentina because I honestly knew nothing about Vietnam and didn’t know what to expect/be excited for. But these were some of the most beautiful, epiphany-filled four weeks of my life, and frankly I don’t think SA or Argentina could beat it. People on the program have asked me why I loved Hanoi so much, and I haven’t been able to give a straightforward answer, because as much as I fell in love with the food and the motorbike rides on the crazy streets and the alleys lined with cheap clothing and gift stores, it’s the intangible things - what I learned about myself and where I come from, and what I learned about people and the world - that give this experience so much beauty, and I am grateful beyond words for the moments I felt on top of the world, for the lessons I’m taking away. Hope we’ll meet again one day :)

[outrospecting-blog1]

Week 5

Left Hanoi for a week to go to a rural area (Lac Village in Mai Chau province) for a change in perspective and scenery! Pretty much all the families here are ethnic minorities, while the people in Hanoi and other large cities are mostly Kinh, and needless to say life is very very different here

- We visited some community health centers serving the people in the village, which in appearance were not too different from the hospitals we visited in Hanoi, and heard from the directors. It was interesting to see how they account for their population’s health, often times more meticulously, than larger urban institutions - like one of the health centers had a whiteboard count of all the people and families living in the village, of the people who came in for screenings, of the people with infectious diseases, the number of births and deaths that year, etc etc... something I’ve never really seen

- The highlight of this week (other than the views from hiking to a huge cave and biking through patty fields) was our case study interviews. Basically we were interviewing random(?) residents of the village about our respective case study topics - ours was psychosocial and emotional well-being (the others are infectious disease, maternal/child health, environmental health, aging and care) - and we basically had someone from the area take us around to people’s homes where we would could talk with them. This felt so weird - we (foreigners) were literally walking into strangers’ homes unannounced and asking them personal questions in English and often times with double translation (English to Vietnamese, Vietnamese to the local dialect)... but it actually was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had. Basically our group was trying to understand what makes people feel happy and fulfilled (as our approach to how they maintain non physical well-being) and asking questions about their sources of happiness and stress and where they find meaning.. - So many of these people were just so content and at peace with their lives - they had a family, a source of income, and a home - and weren’t expressing the desire for anything more. Many of our questions with the word “happiness” or “sadness” - whatever that translates to (my guess is that there is no direct translation, maybe it means something closer to satisfaction/fulfillment) - were answered with laughter because they didn’t understand why anyone would wonder these things, and these emotions didn’t have much relevance in their lives. We learned that people here just don’t think about their emotions and obsess over the feeling of happiness, or ruminate about their sadness, they just go about their daily routine consisting of family and work, and if something bad happens they just let it pass because they knew it will!.. I still have trouble understanding this (we all did, some more than others) because my own life is 100% the opposite, and it’s possible that I’ve simplified it in my mind to make it processable, but this was such an interesting and profound experience realizing what different people and cultures and communities can be like..

- Other differences are that people’s lives revolve around their families.. in Hanoi, families live together a lot more than they do in the States, but the significance of family is next level in the rural village. People live and work not only with, but also for their families, to the point where the concept of individuality is almost irrelevant? A 180 from the States, where people are expected to move out and start their own life by a certain age.. There’s also a stronger sense of community in the villages - most of the families know each other and will often go over to help each other out and give gifts. Most of the people here are farmers, so they are much closer to the products of their work than are urbanites working in offices/factories/etc where the products are often intangible, so not only is their everyday life very different, but work means something very different to them- The rural/urban distinction fascinates me because of a literature class I took on the culture of cities (versus rural places) -- I keep being reminded of excerpts from Simmel’s piece The Metropolis and Mental Life -

To the extent that the metropolis creates these psychological conditions - with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life - it creates in the foundations of mental life, and in the degree of awareness necessitated by our organization as creatures dependent on differences, a deep contrast with the slower, more habitual, more smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensory-mental phase of small town and rural existence.

Thereby the essentially intellectualistic character of the mental life of the metropolis becomes intelligible as over against that of the small town which rests more on feelings and emotional relationships. These latter are rooted in the unconscious levels of the mind and develop most readily in the steady equilibrium of unbroken customs... All emotional relationships between persons rests their individuality, whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as with numbers, that is as with elements which, in themselves, are indifferent, which are of interest only insofar as they offer something objectively perceivable. It is in this very manner that the inhabitant of the metropolis reckons with his merchant, his customer, and with his servant, and frequently with the persons with whom he is thrown into obligatory association. These relationships stand in distinct contrast with the nature of the smaller circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individual characteristics produces, with an equal inevitability, an emotional tone in conduct, a sphere which is beyond the mere objective weighting of tasks performed and payments made.

What is essential here as regards the economic- psychological aspect of the problem is that in less advanced cultures production was for the customer who ordered the product so that the producer and the purchaser knew one another. The modern city, however, is supplied almost exclusively by production for the market, that is, for entirely unknown purchasers who never appear in the actual field of vision of the producers themselves.

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- Spent the weekend on a cruise ship touring Ha Long Bay which was absolutely unreal.. probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to, wow i still can’t believe this happened.. also had a really cool tour guide (we were the same age), who i ended up having a long convo with on the ship and on the bus ride back because his story was so fascinating/unique.. it is crazy to me how you can feel such a strong and instant connection with random people who grew up in a different country and live a very different life than you do, when you start talking about things like ambition and reciprocity and open-mindedness and disappointment and hope... this was the first of several serendipitous encounters I had in Vietnam

[outrospecting-blog1]

Week 3

What I knew about Vietnam last month: - Pho - Motorbikes (?)

What I currently know about Vietnam: - Pho. and other rice noodles. - Motorbikes. 4 million motorbikes on the most unregulated, insane streets you could possibly imagine, it’s absolutely mind blowing. - Coffee lover’s paradise. Been averaging 3 cups per day (// if I could I’d only drink Vietnamese coffee for the rest of life) - It’s a communist country, but also not really. Pretty much everything was owned by the government (also meaning everything was free) prior to the economic reform in 1986 (doi moi), but post-doi moi Vietnam abandoned collective industrial/agricultural operations and allowed private enterprises. Vietnam currently operates under a “socialist-oriented market economy” but is very pro-capitalism on the ground. Walking around Hanoi, you’d never guess that this place has known anything other than capitalism - Vietnam’s health system shares similarities with that of the US - private/public health insurance is a thing, except lots of people pay out-of-pocket even if they have an insurance card. The health care system’s supposed to treat everyone equally but ofc that’s never the reality - wealthy people can afford to pay for better health care, and those who pay with cash often get better treatment than those who use insurance. Maternal/child mortality is low, and there generally seems to be more importance placed on preventative care than in America which is interesting. - Extended families live together in homes that are up to 5 stories but very narrow (and also very hot). I think a total of 7 family members live in our homestay - everyone is so sweet :’) - Kpop is huge lol // I don’t usually bring up my ethnicity unless it comes up, but it’s come up quite a bit here, talking to local students and such - have had some really pleasant interactions!! it’s impressive how well some students can speak English even though they’ve never left country. Aspects of Vietnamese culture resemble Korean culture a LOT more than i guess I imagined and that familiarity has been a little strange

//

- Really really appreciating all the people here - including each of my homestay family members -- - Mom is a lovely, lovely woman, works as an accountant for a travel agency but prepares breakfast for us every morning before she leaves for work and makes sure we’re very well-fed and comfortable :) - Dad doesn’t speak English but is really awesome, he works as a police officer(?) but unclear exactly what kind of government work he does, poured us bottomless beer on the first night and cooked really good tomato/egg soup the night I was so tired I couldn’t wake up from my nap lol - Bin is the craziest, most mischievous 12 y.o. I have ever encountered - he won’t stop smiling/dancing/saying things that make absolutely no sense (and he knows it) /taking my stuff (i’ll wake up in the morning to new apps downloaded on my phone)/walking into my room because he wants to play - it’s borderline insanity being around this kid for more than 5 minutes but I’ll probably miss it - Quinh Anh is our host sis and the same age as us, but she’s actually the mom’s cousin and has been living with the family for the past 2 years bc she goes to university in Hanoi. She answers all 50 of our questions during dinner every night bc she speaks the best English, and she’s the absolute sweetest :’) I’ve learned so much from her - Nguyen is the country coordinator for our time in Vietnam - basically the head faculty for the program here - and he’s one of the most cheerful, lively, happiness-spreading person I’ve met - one of those people who warm your heart and make you smile every time you see them. ugh i love this man and his presence and i never want to say bye - KC is the instructor for two of our “courses” and he’s a wonderful teacher and  person, gonna be talking to him on Friday about our case study topic of psychosocial/emotional well-being because he (along with Nguyen) is doing work/research in mental health and I can’t wait to know more about his background/specific interests

Love this country so far, and the people are always the best part

[outrospecting-blog1]

Week 2

2:33pm; Chinatown Coffee Co; Beautiful Goodbye - Maroon 5; raining and cold outside but lively in here

- Kicked off the week with a 3.5 hour long workshop (on anti-oppression) — it started off with the facilitators asking us to write “I am” poems speaking to our personal identities (which is sorta anxiety-inducing.. how do you answer the question “who are you”) but everyone’s was so beautiful when we shared… peers are so beautiful when you really start getting to know them

- Went to the National Coalition on Homelessness for our group case study - we got the opportunity to listen to a woman tell her story about experiencing homelessness... rly a story of a very broken system on a very resilient human being // hope is a powerful, powerful thing.

Some facts: - 93% of woman who experience homelessness are sexually assaulted. - There are men walking around in suits who are homeless. The woman we spoke with was a college-educated real estate agent, formerly middle class, when a series of events took a toll on her mental health and led her to lose her home... she was refused assistance several times because she didn’t “look homeless” - Homelessness is a money making industry and one of the top groups who benefit off homelessness is the National Coalition to End Homelessness (ofc the world runs on money and that’s not going to change, but things like this still drive me crazy like I almost don’t want to believe it) - DC is trying to drive out the poor/homeless - i.e. replacing metro/park benches so that people can’t lay on them, apartments aren’t accepting housing vouchers from people who make 30% below the median income and imposing ridiculous application fees that aren’t covered by vouchers, etc... “It’s a human rights city, but only for those who can afford it”

(Cities are so beautiful and so ugly, and both are reasons i never want to leave)

- Still blown away by our site visit to La Clinica Del Pueblo (FQHC).. nothing more inspiring than success stories of community-centered programs Snippets: - “culturally appropriate health services” - “What happens in the exam room with the doctor is only 10% of the pie.” - Every kid ages 0-5 gets a book (!!!) - many of the children are growing up in houses without books because their parents are illiterate, so the book is more than just a book, it’s a health intervention bc education is so, so crucial - The director expressed how proud she was of the mental health/substance abuse program which adopted a psychoeducational approach - “it’s enormously empowering to learn that there is a name for what you’re experiencing” (yess).. also a means of family building, sometimes from scratch - Promotores: “Let the community solve its own problems.” / “Most effective messengers are folks within the community” -- i.e. diabetes education delivered by people who have diabetes / the health providers themselves are immigrants

FQHCs stand in such a unique position and have so much potential to do more than treat sickness / can really spark hope and that is crazy

- DC Central Kitchen - also loved this site visit, the most comprehensive and impactful food non-profit I’ve encountered -- They have a ton of incredible programs, one of which is the culinary job training program which helps people facing employment barriers (due to homelessness, addiction, incarceration, etc) to enter the food service industry and has been amazingly successful // Nutrition/food access/food policy/education is something I keep coming back to and this place reminded me why // food as a vehicle for individual/family/community building and empowerment - it really comes back to hope

- Med Anth is my fav -- saving some quotes on medicalization: “Medicine has done much more than define, diagnose, and treat disease -- it has helped make us the kinds of living creatures that we have become at the start of the 21st century.” ”Medicine was entwined with new ways of governing people, individually and collectively, in which medical experts in alliance with political authorities tried to manage ways of living to minimize disease and promote individual and collective health” “The proper role of the doctor is to seek to restore that lost normativity of the body.. We might think that if medical authority goes beyond these limits it runs the risk of illegitimacy. But this belief would be mistaken. Doctors have long engaged with collective as well as individual bodies. Since the start of the 19th century, perhaps earlier, doctors were involved in the mapping of disease in social space, collection of statistics on the illnesses of the population, design of sewers, town planning, regulation of foodstuffs and cemeteries and much more...” “Medicine has helped make us thoroughly artificial.”

- Most of us are itching to leave the country, but I’m really gonna miss D.C. - it’s been a memorable 2 weeks full of highs and more highs

Cya, 'Murica Next up: A 13.5 hour flight, another 10 hour flight, and then Vietnam!!

[outrospecting-blog1]

Week 1

- People are great!!! We’ve literally spent all day every day together for the past week, and hopeful that connections will continue to form // in-group dynamics are always interesting The schedule’s been jam packed all week - spent the first few days at a retreat center in Maryland doing orientation/community building and starting “classes” in the middle of the woods

Some highlights: - Read “To Hell with Good Intentions” - thought-provoking as always.. really challenges (or just insults) what we/Westerners think of as “helping” when you are “othering” and also gaining more than giving, and sometimes harming (or at least condescending) more than helping // walking a tightrope with a lot of these programs bc intent vs impact is always tricky - Watched a documentary called Remote Area Medical on our last night in MD and it was really striking.. I’d never really given much thought to rural health because I’m a lot more familiar with the urban landscape. But god there were some heartbreaking and poignant stories/moments - people waiting nights in freezing cold so they could be handed a slip of paper to see a clinician… RAM not having the capacity to see everyone and having to turn people with high hopes away… people living in chronic pain for 10 years (and this being the norm) because there’s no way for them to have (or they can’t afford) a 10 minute procedure… kids being able to see clearly for the first time because there’s no optometrist otherwise.. a man being able to finally smile again after getting dentures (this made me see dentistry in a new light i didn’t realize how important it was..) There is so much need in this country // organizations like Doctors Without Borders do great work and all (with lots of qualifications) but what if there was as much interest in reaching people and addressing needs within country.. even within our own states and our own cities… i wonder if outcomes would be different (i think they would) - Visited Red Wiggler Farm on our way back - the mission of this place is to have disabled and non-disabled people work on the farm together to learn and grow (plants) (but also just grow) and produce - what a beautiful intersection.. // Made salsa using ingredients from the farm and discovered sorrel (which we picked off the ground and just ate) and ground cherries - both were actually so good and this place was just beautiful... the sky and the weather were also beautiful, this season is beautiful :’) - Neighborhood Day 1 - our group of 4 went out to U Street and basically gave ourselves a tour of the built environment to try to understand this area of DC, which turned out to be quite diverse and rapidly changing We interviewed 4 strangers about their experiences living there - we chatted with a Starbucks barista who said “Change is inevitable, it all depends on where you take that change” (referring to the city) Another person was an elderly black man who’s lived in the neighborhood for 51 years, and thought the changes were for the better because it “used to be awful” - surprised me because I’d expected him to speak negatively of the gentrification as someone whose family / community members left the area while non-blacks moved in -- reminder that there is never a single narrative or single set of narratives / to not make assumptions - Some of us went to a slam poetry event last night at the recommendation of a program staff member - this was incredible and my description will not do it justice but.. the slam poetry culture (in general, but especially within the black community) is unlike anything I’ve ever seen/experienced.. the amount of passion and raw, unfiltered humanity blows my mind I can’t even keep up with the poems bc I’m just mesmerized by the poets. We were complete outsiders (racially, geographically, culturally) but the strength of community in this room was undeniable from the moment we walked in - they were basically family with shared experiences of pain, oppression, addiction, love, hurt, and hope.. These people legit pour their souls out into the room, as if there is no audience - people are cheering/clapping/snapping/throwing pens, it’s out of this world.. It’s almost midnight, all the people on the list have gone, and the host starts wrapping up. "Anyone got any final announcements/words to say?” “Always defer to love…” I’m not a poet myself, so I don’t quite know how to put words to chills, but I am still in awe..

- I can’t get over how lucky I am... I hope I never do

[outrospecting-blog1]

Home

For Day 1 introductions, we were asked to name one place we call “home”

I call SoCal home... but what is home?

I was back for a week this month, and it was familiar yet also strange - Orange County is a one-of-a-kind place... of tight cultural enclaves, of clear cut social groups defined by age and religion and race, of distinct expectations and inequalities, etc.. definitely felt like I didn’t belong there anymore, this time around (not a bad thing, just how it is)

A while ago I decided that home isn’t necessarily a place, but maybe just a feeling - I feel home when I’m with my closest friends even in an unfamiliar place, or when I’m biking past the Schuylkill at night // 

Watched this Ted Talk recently called Don’t ask me where I’m from, ask where I’m a local, and it hit the nail on the head --

“... Our experience is where we’re from. So, where are you a local? I propose a three-step test. I call these the three “R’s”: rituals, relationships, restrictions.

First, think of your daily rituals, whatever they may be: making your coffee, driving to work,harvesting your crops, saying your prayers. What kind of rituals are these? Where do they occur? In what city or cities in the world do shopkeepers know your face? As a child, I carried out fairly standard suburban rituals in Boston, with adjustments made for the rituals my mother brought from London and Lagos. We took off our shoes in the house, we were unfailingly polite with our elders, we ate slow-cooked, spicy food. In snowy North America, ours were rituals of the global South. The first time I went to Delhi or to southern parts of Italy, I was shocked by how at home I felt. The rituals were familiar. "R" number one, rituals.

Now, think of your relationships, of the people who shape your days. To whom do you speak at least once a week, be it face to face or on FaceTime? Be reasonable in your assessment; I'm not talking about your Facebook friends. I'm speaking of the people who shape your weekly emotional experience. My mother in Accra, my twin sister in Boston,my best friends in New York: these relationships are home for me. "R" number two, relationships.

We're local where we carry out our rituals and relationships, but how we experience our locality depends in part on our restrictions. By restrictions, I mean, where are you able to live? What passport do you hold? Are you restricted by, say, racism, from feeling fully at home where you live? By civil war, dysfunctional governance, economic inflation, from living in the locality where you had your rituals as a child? This is the least sexy of the R’s,less lyric than rituals and relationships, but the question takes us past "Where are you now?" to "Why aren't you there, and why?" Rituals, relationships, restrictions.”

(This next part was more so food for thought, especially going abroad -- )

"I'm a local of Lagos and Berlin," suggests overlapping experiences, layers that merge together, that can't be denied or removed. You can take away my passport, but you can't take away my experience. That I carry within me. Where I'm from comes wherever I go.

It's possible that without realizing it, we're playing a power game, especially in the context of multi-ethnic countries. As any recent immigrant knows, the question "Where are you from?" or "Where are you really from?" is often code for "Why are you here?"

Then we have the scholar William Deresiewicz's writing of elite American colleges."Students think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan -- never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers."

I'm with him. To call one student American, another Pakistani, then triumphantly claim student body diversity ignores the fact that these students are locals of the same milieu.The same holds true on the other end of the economic spectrum. A Mexican gardener in Los Angeles and a Nepali housekeeper in Delhi have more in common in terms of rituals and restrictions than nationality implies.

Perhaps my biggest problem with coming from countries is the myth of going back to them. I'm often asked if I plan to "go back" to Ghana. I go to Accra every year, but I can't "go back" to Ghana. It's not because I wasn't born there. My father can't go back, either. The country in which he was born, that country no longer exists. We can never go back to a place and find it exactly where we left it. Something, somewhere will always have changed, most of all, ourselves. People.

“roots and wings” comes to mind

[outrospecting-blog1]

Hello friend :o)

Idk what number tumblr this is, but I thought I’d start a new space for a new season —

I’m taking a break from real life for the next semester and have the crazy privilege of traveling to 3 different countries across the world (Vietnam, South Africa, and Argentina) with 26 other people from across the country… to learn, experience, grow, think, feel, play etc etc. this is still surreal tbh

I’m on a comparative study abroad program (full title is IHP Health and Community: Globalization, Culture, and Care) - basically focused on health systems/policies in very different country contexts and the ways in which communities around the world strive for health and well-being (yea lol i’m a public health major) - lots of experiential learning through site visits and case studies and conversations with locals and such I have so much to look forward to that I don’t even know what, but at the top of the list is people - every person whose story/perspective/snippet of life that I’ll be lucky enough to encounter over the next few months.

I think people can be so beautiful - it blows my mind how everyone has their own personality and thought process and way of expressing themselves. Even within this travel group, the diversity of experiences/interests/personalities is fascinating, and I think there’s something to admire about pretty much everyone out there - whether we want to see it or not, whether it’s intuitively a “good” thing or not.

And sometimes (a lot of times) people are not so beautiful but I think we all deserve to be understood - something I’ve been thinking about a lot esp since taking anthropology, which really pushes you to take ten steps back and question why people are the way they are and value their narratives. Lots more to come on this bc I love anth so much and 2/4 (but rly 4/4) of the “classes” I’m taking are anth-related

So I was sitting in Dripp last week finally starting to read my pre-departure materials, and came across this gold that encapsulates all my people-thoughts of this past year and what I ultimately want to do in life -

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(transcript)

“Instead of the age of introspection we need to shift to the age of outrospection. And by outrospection I mean the idea of discovering who you are and what to do with your life by stepping outside yourself, discovering the lives of other people, other civilisations. And the ultimate art form for the age of outrospection is empathy. ... First, the way that empathy can be part of the art of living, a philosophy of life. Empathy isn’t just something that expands your moral universe, empathy is something that can make you a more creative thinker, improve your relationships, can create the human bonds that make life worth living. But more than that empathy is also about social change... I think it’s actually quite dangerous because empathy can create revolution. Not one of those old fashioned revolutions of new states, policies, governments, laws but something much more fiery and dangerous which is a revolution of human relationships.” “Now if you open a standard psychology textbook you’ll see two definitions of empathy. One of them is this: ‘Effective empathy, Empathy has a shared emotional response’... The second kind you’ll find when you open your psychology textbook is this ‘cognitive empathy’ which is about perspective taking, about stepping into somebody else’s world, almost like an actor looking through the eyes of their character. It’s about understanding somebody else’s world view, their beliefs, the fears, the experiences that shape how they look at the world and how they look at themselves. We make assumptions about people, we have prejudices about people which block us from seeing their uniqueness, their individuality, we use labels. And highly empathic people get beyond that, or get beyond those labels, by nurturing their curiosity about others. ... Highly empathic people tend to be very sensitive listeners, they're very good at understanding what somebody else's needs are. They tend to be also people who in conversations share part of their own lives, make conversations two way dialogues, make themselves vulnerable. Worth thinking about as well is to think about political conversations. It won't stop until we talk. This is the motto of a grassroots peace building organisation in Israel and the Palestinian territories called 'The Parents Circle'. What it does is bring together Palestinian and Israeli families who share something very special - these families have all lost members of their own families in the conflict. And The Parents Circle brings them together for conversations, picnics, meetings where they share each other's stories, they discover that they share the same pain, the same blood - the make that empathic bond. They also have other fantastic projects, my favourite one is called 'Hello Peace'. It's a free phone telephone line so anybody can pick up and call that number. If you're a Palestinian and call it you're immediately put through to an Israeli, you can have a half hour conversation. If you're an Israeli pick it up you're put through to a Palestinian. Since 2002 over a million calls have been logged on the Hello Peace free phone line. That's the kind of project which is trying to create grassroots empathy. Now we normally think of empathy as something that happens between individuals. But I also believe it can be a collective force, it can happen on a mass scale. When I think of history I think not of the rise and fall of civilisations and religions or political systems, I think of the rise and fall of empathy; moments of mass empathic flowering and also of course of empathic collapse. ... We normally think of empathy as empathising with the down and outs, the poor and marginalised, those on the edges of society. I think we need to be more adventurous in who we try to empathise with. I think we need to empathise with those in power. We need to understand how those in power, in whatever realm it is, think about the world and their lives and their ambitions. We need to understand their values. Only then are we going to be able to develop effective strategies for social, political and economic transformation. ... Equally, I think we need to apply our more ambitious thinking in policy realms such as thinking about climate change. We all know there's a huge gap between what we know about climate change and the amount of action that people are taking, i.e. not very much. I think that gap is explained by empathy in two forms. I think there's an empathic gap in terms of we're not empathising across space with people in developing countries like in India, people who are being hit by climate change induced floods or droughts in Kenya. And, almost more importantly perhaps, we are failing to empathise through time with future generations and I think we need to learn to expand our empathic imaginations forwards through time as well as across space. How are we going to do it? I think we need new social institutions. We need, for example, empathy museums - a place which is not about dusty exhibits, you know like an old Victorian museum, but an experiential and conversational public space where you might walk in and in the first room there is a human library where you can borrow people for conversations. You walk into the next room and there are 20 sewing machines and there are former Vietnamese sweatshop workers who will teach you how to make a t-shirt like the one you're probably wearing under sweatshop labour conditions and you'll be paid five pence at the end of it - so you understand the labour behind the label. You may well go into the cafe and scan in your food and discover that the working conditions of those who picked the coffee beans of the drink that you're drinking. You may see a video of them talking about their lives trying to make a connection across space and into realms that you don't know about. I think we need to think about bringing empathy into our everyday lives in a very sort of habitual way.

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I love love love love this - So I guess this is kind of my starting point.. I’m going to keep this page mainly focused on “outrospection” (very loosely) - the things I’m learning about other people, places, communities, ideas, cultures, systems, etc. (gonna be a lot of quote dumping) Going to try keeping the introspection separate but it’ll prob slip in more than once or twice bc I think you naturally learn about yourself by learning about others.

If you happen to be reading this, I would also love to know how you are doing so say hi and lmk what’s going on in your life / in your mind / in America / Philly / OC / wherever!! If you know me I’m trying to be a better texter and I promise I will respond!!