Photo blog - November 2013

Some of these are from a few weeks ago, but still somwhat emblematic of a year which will very soon end.  So much to be thankful for, lots of laughs, new places seen, relationships deepened, our crazy beautiful world tasted.  T'giving always makes me a little melodramatic!

Displaying excellent taste while rocking out to Sally Shapiro

Big boy with that catwalk hair

Don't lose your head, Kwame!

Meanwhile in Accra - I guess this makes me a fool! Pls invest in public washrooms

What, my hands are SUPER clean...

Witty and healthy - chapeau, KK!

Hmm, how much candy went into making this possible?

Nihilistic grafiti...pull on a black turtleneck

In the desert in Niger, the heat causes a dust spiral (video doesn't really do it justice)

Best view in Paris (coz you can't see the flipping tower, for once)

The spooky house on the lake!

Les sorrelles devant le lac neufchatelois

Meanwhile @ Estavayer, it's all good, clean family fun..

I happen to know a thing or two about simbas, and you don't impress me much..

MC takes the big boy onstage at the latter's first pantomine - thanks MC!

2 years in NBO!

 

 

 

 

 

Today is our 2 year anniversary in Nairobi!  For those of you who STILL haven’t made it out here, hurry up… Here are some photos and videos of what we’ve been up to, and, still further below, a book review (sort of).

Road tripping - advance level!

With little cousin Zed

Big Boy's first trip to the hairdressers...

First day of school (note Big Boy's uniform!)

Big Boy joins Elephant Class

Mara, anyone?

 Religion for Atheists

One of the distinct downsides of living in Nairobi, for me at any rate, is the commute I endure to work.  It is, generally, an hour and a quarter each way.  Which statistic is, in and of itself, reasonably sobering. 

But what makes it truly shattering is the parade of the human condition along the way.  On a given day, I could encounter a lame camel taking up an entire lane (noisily and violently berated by his maniacal mahout), an accident which has left a motorbike driver (boda boda – in Swahili) convulsing on the tarmac, blood dripping down his sideburns from under his still-on helmet, or, most infuriatingly, a solid wall of entirely inexplicable traffic.  

Between stimulus and response, it is said, lies freedom.  So it was in an effort to make the most of the commute that I began in earnest to consume audiobooks in the 8 hours a week of time spent in the car (I generally  work from home one day a week).  

It is a testament to the power of the written word that despite the parade of horrors unfolding before me, I am moved to laughing out loud (thanks PG Wodehouse!), or reflectively cradling my chin as I gaze philosophically at an 18-wheeler lying upended in a ditch, its wheels spinning slow and distinct in the haze of the setting sun and woodsmoke (Power of Now).  

I recently read (or, technically, ‘listened to’), ‘Religion for Athiests’, which is, by far the most enjoyable book I have read this year.  Alain de Botton, the author, basically sets out to save the baby (i.e. the consolations and reassurances which religion provides) from being discarded with the bathwater (i.e. the unthinking acceptance of the superstitions and perversions of organized religion).  I couldn’t’ believe that someone out there had been having the same thoughts as I have, and then actually gone ahead and articulated an argument which spoke directly to some of my innermost turmoils.  

While I lack the conviction and, let’s face it, stones, to call myself an atheist (also, the rational side of me cannot conceive of any cosmic upside to ‘outing’ myself like this, in the event there is a God (on which topic, oh supreme deity!, I have no comment at the present), I have struggled for several decades to map my own sense of spirituality onto the complicated menu of pre-existing religious options.

Actually, it is a topic which is largely taboo even within the confines of my own skull, out of a pre-emptive sense of profound disloyalty to my family and the proverbial ummah.  

My argument goes thusly: In questioning my faith, I am inherently joining the ranks of Islamo-illiterates/haters and their enablers (notable example of the laughably mercenary Hirsi Ali, the now-Dutch MP, “author” of “Infidel” – non-astonishingly at all, given the coarsening of public discourse, a NYTimes bestseller), or the more luke-warm likes of people I actually admire partly because of their even-handed approach to public religiosity (contrast Zidane, a self-professed “Non-practising muslim” (and my favorite footballer) with, say, an ibn-Saud or Bernie Madoff (ex-religious chest-thumper extraordinaire).

And so this self-censorship extinguishes any inner-dialogue, which in turn precludes any evolution in my self-knowledge.  This is the cycle in which I have, largely, been trapped since my late teens.  

Happily, it turns out the prison door was unlocked all along.  De botton argues that we are generally far too deferential to the “ownership” claimed by organized religions over various moral and ethical postures.  The basic premises of happy co-existence (e.g. do not kill, do not steal, which in turn beget corollaries like ‘hold the lift even for the a-hole who never takes off his backpack’ (why does a middle-aged guy even wear a backpack to the office?) existed well before religions were codified, and were in fact co-opted by the various founding fathers (and I DO mean fathers) in an attempt at branding and marketing their faiths. 

Examples abound (although de Botton, in the fashion of Western contemporary thinking, avoids any from the annals of Islam, possibly for fear of being pilloried): 

• Maternal love: Nothing is richer, or more universal, than the love of a mother for her child.  Cave-babies ice ages ago felt it before flickering firelight, the lucky among us continue to feel it, and it is the deepest foundation stone of our personalities.  Not a coincidence, therefore, that the motif of the adoring Virgin with her immaculately conceived son is one of the handful of artistic themes officially sanctioned by the Catholic church.  It is nothing more than an attempt to convert a secular form of love into a religious one, and thereby claiming for the Church as a sort of exclusivity, the consolations of this most ancient (and most intimately 'yours') anti-depressant.  If there were an glowing neon advertising slogan outside the church, it could read like this: “Inside, you will be as understood and enfolded in love as you once were by your own mother” (I’m not in the advertising business, but you get the point)

• Public singing: In plundering emotions and rituals for its own private arsenal, organized religion has not limited itself to such profundities as maternal love.  Instead, and in wise recognition of human nature, it has also ‘borrowed’ such pedestrian ceremonies as public singing, which has been found by scientists as a form of deep and almost instant relaxation (recall the last live concert at which you were intimate with the artist’s body of work).  But singing in public, shoulder to shoulder, is now essentially limited (at least in day time and with children) to religious events.  It was, in contrast, and for our forebears, a regular and active way of congregating and communing, without the stress of having beforehand to exchange pleasantries re: the state of the market today etc. 

Anyway, the take-away for me was that none of this pre-ordained, and that everyone is making it up as they go along.  Moreover, most of the positive aspects of religion pre-existed in ‘non-branded’ (Migros) format.  In line with the Hiding Hand Principle (discussed in a previous post), the book was, for me, an exhortation to just get on with it, and not over-think: There is no 'authentic' way to do this, especially as far as passing on spirituality to kids is concerned.  

Indeed, it is impossible to evaluate the entire summation of yourself (or anyone, by consequent) on a transaction-by-transaction basis.  

Is it bad that I didn’t hold the lift for the backpack guy today – yes.  Does it make me a bad person entirely – not really. 

Principle of the Hiding Hand

Before.

After!

This race report is overdue - largely because I vacillated between the approaches to a race report.

Option A was a detailed, kilometer-by-kilometer analysis which would I would set forth, in lawyerly fashion, every pointilistic detail which went into the making of the experience. 

This would have meant:

•     every Zulu mining song in the pre-dawn dark of the Durban start line,
•     every high five,
•     every energy bean;
•     every brim-full cup of Pepsi spilled on my right shoe at km 66,
•     every weird blister (not unrelated to the Pepsi incident?),
•     every skinny dude in super short shorts sitting with his head between his knees, moaning low, awaiting medevac.... (you see the trajectory dimming a bit).

Happily (for you, gentle reader), I managed even to bore myself with the draft versions of Option A.  Instead, I have chosen Option B, which can be subtitled "Things I may have learned from this".

The things I may have learned can neatly be placed under the Principle of the Hiding Hand (PHH). 

PHH states, simply, that most things which (may) prove worthwhile are so costly and so hard that it is best not to overthink the hurdles at the outset.  PHH is, in origin, a tool of economics, applied to such undertakings as national highway projects or dam building. 

Post WWII, planning experts were routinely wrong about the cost and operational assumptions that went into such projects, by a factor of 1000 or more.  In fairness, the sorts of projects they were undertaking had never before been done by our species. Once concluded (ridiculous cost over-runs and blown deadlines notwithstanding) however, many of these project benefited huge portions of humanity both directly (cheaper transport, more water, the Internet!) and indirectly (by adding how-to (and how-not-to!) knowledge to our planet). 

The fact is, PHH is eminently relevant to our day-to-day lives inasmuch as running Comrades is not dissimilar (for one person), really, to building a national highway system. PHH applies, to the 9th dan, to child rearing as well:

•     you really don't know what you're signing up for,
•     your diligence is sketchy and your assumptions rosy,
•     you commit the hell out of your personal life and public personna (inseparable from your inner self-image, really),
•     and yet, despite all this, you just have a vague but unshakeable sense that, once engaged/completed, this will be fundamentally good for you. 

In this light, here's what I think I learned:

1 Do, rather than think. Self-explanatory, really.  But I generally divide my annual goals up into 'Mental' and 'Physical'.  That architecture is dead for me.  My 2014 list will be couched exclusively as 'actions to be completed'.  My mind is a nice tool for solving discrete tasks, but not for the initial parceling required of larger ones. 

2.  My ability to internalize staggering pieces of information is high.  For instance, the concept of 3D printing is, now, to me, barely cool.  Yet, just six months ago, I thought it was a poor science fiction deus ex machina.  Similarly, in November 2012, the thought of running an 87 kilometer race was like science fiction.  But I just sidestepped the parting clouds, the blaring trumpets, the 'Oh I couldn't possibly', and got down to the nuts and bolts (and tedium) of preparing.

3.  I care desperately what people think.  Finally, and I think this is key to the PHH yielding positive results, I declared my intention to run Comrades, in a way not dissimilar to the way a government announces a 5 year plan, or that it is hosting the World Cup: we stake prestige and self-belief in a public way.  With this public flag planting ceremony, unforeseen hurdles are tackled in creative and resourceful way, and not as personal crosses to be borne. 

Und so, a propos of nothing, and by way of closing celebration, I give you the following impromptu magic/puppet show:

Twas the night before Comrades - Live from Durban

LIVE from Durban

As I’ve mentioned before in these pages, I have been training for the Comrades Ultramarathon on June 3, which is roughly 87km from Durban to St. Petermaaritzburg (called, the ‘up-run’) and the following year vice versa (called the down-run).  2013 is an up-run.  It is the oldest ultra in the world (1921), and was instituted by WWI veterans to try and recreate the camaraderie they required to get through the horrors of the first great war – in which such technologies as barbed wire, machine gunnery, and chemical warfare were first deployed on a large-scale basis. 

For the tough bastards who made it through all that, running 90kms in flannel suits and leather soled shoes while having the occasional pint along the way by way of hydration must have seemed a quaint little lark to be undertaken on a whim, or perhaps as a tipsy wager.

Naturally, they didn’t worry about putting bandaids on their nipples (yes, this is a thing in endurance sports) or how I only have lime-berry flavoured eduro-gels (a gross, malodextrin based concoction that one chokes down to ensure no spikes or troughs in blood sugar levels) left.  So it is with a certain humility that one approaches Comrades, both out of respect for the distance, and the people who have come before you.  I never felt this when I ran, say, the NY marathon, which, while fun, felt a little shop-worn in comparison.  

My friend and neighbor S. the Runner from Swaziland (hereinafter ‘SR’, to avoid confusion with S. the kindergartener), who has run this race 4 times, has been instrumental in planting the seed of this idea, sharing training techniques, encouragement and generally conveying his passion for the race.  Without him, Comrades would be something I would merely read about in an in-flight magazine.  He is the kind of person who actually gets a buzz out of seeing others prosper – I had heard of this phenomenon but have yet to embrace it as a personality trait. 

In this sense, SR embodies all that is best about endurance running – generous with time and experience, competitive (but only with himself), and totally beyond being concerned by such silliness as who finished a particular race first (he generally does, for the record) or pacing or generally the kind of thing you would associate with an accomplished competitor.  I experience this zen-ness every now and then (for a few minutes) but generally I spend the longer runs whinging and/or worrying about where to go the bathroom.  

A word on the training.  I had to stop Karate (more, in another post, on this topic) altogether because my knees started to hurt, and because I needed to be running 3-5 times a week, most during the week, one recovery run with A. on Saturdays, and a long run with the team (there are 3 of us signed up) on Sundays.  The long runs range from 25km-ultra-marathon distance, although we generally measure time-on-feet as being between 3-5 hours.  Our longest team run was 60kms up and down the ridges of the mist-shrouded coffee plantation slopes of Thigoni. 

What do I think about on these every-weekend endeavours, you ask?

• Kms 1 – 5: I wonder if there will be any crepes left when I’m back.  Did I give S. her eye drop before I left? I think I have to pee.
• Kms 5 – 20: I am a world class athlete.  Just look at the foliage whipping by me, I must be doing sub-4 minute kilometers. Oh. (upon consulting the actual pace on my wrist watch)
• Kms 21 – 40: It is hot (by now it is 1030ish).  I really hope they put the crepes in saran-wrap.
• Kms 40 onwards: Brain observing body, without active complaints, but with narrowed and calculating eyes. 

If you’re not from or haven’t lived in an African country, odds are you haven’t heard of Comrades.  This is largely because of the fact that, due to apartheid, South Africa was an island when it came to (what we used to call, gigglingly, at the Model United Nations) international intercourse – and especially in the field of sports.  Consequently, South Africa seems to be a Galapagos for sporting events – with an event like Comrades being nationally televised, graced by several thousand runners, and yet with limited profile internationally. 

It has also been an interesting insight into South African culture.  I remember in my passport when I was younger, an all-caps cautionary statement that “This document is not valid for travel to Israel or South Africa”.  Both places remain, therefore, in my mind, where naughty people are doing naughty things.  This is not a political scree, so much as it is a remark on how much things you experience in childhood mark you.  


It is also an insight into the remarkable churning of your brain which is brought on by the experience of travel to new places.  

Specifically, while waiting for my flight at Jo'burg airport, I walked by a small group of people milling about in front of a large television screen.  On-screen, was an image of a broad-necked white man with savagely cropped hair.  He jabbed the air as he spoke (the TV emitted no sound), and a vein throbbed malignantly along the side of his head.  It was my instinctual judgment that this would probably be a broadcast of South African parliamentary debate, and so was impressed that the general citizenry would think these proceedings (particularly on mute!) to be worth watching.  

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when camera panned out a second later, making it clear that the segment I had thought was a right wing politician giving an impassioned anti-something-or-other speech was in fact one of those human-drama segments on a WWF wrestlemania programme.

Takeaway - I am a racist dog (and an idiot), and the brain is a funny thing.  I walked away quickly, worried that someone in the crowd would somehow out me.  

Another amazing travel experience: 20 minutes after take-off from NBO, the captain of the plane (who, on South African Airways, is called 'Commander', as in "This is Commander from the cockpit") - can I just say how much I prefer this nomenclature.  

Anyway, Commander urged us to look out the right side of the plane, where Mother Nature had prepared a rare treat for us:

 

It was as though we were doing a helicopter drive-by of Mount Killi in the golden light of the late African afternoon.  I could make out the base camp, and even the shiny-backed profiles of some climbers. My only regret is that, on my new phone (thanks A.!) I didn't know how to get rid of the front-and-back images (hence my excitement is also recorded, in its full vapid glory). 

I am still grinning from the view.  With any luck, that grin should last until about kilometer 60 of tomorrow's race - but fingers crossed on that. 

Race report to follow. 

Commander OUT.