So... what are you going to do next?

Abandoned boots in a southwestern Irish fog

Since I finished my defense, a lot of people have been asking me "So... what are you going to do next?" I'm not sure what they expect me to answer. Disneyland? More travel? Work? *GASP* Another PhD?

To be fair, no one who has completed a PhD has asked me this question. But I suppose it is a valid question.  It feels like I have just run an ultramarathon though, so give me a second to catch my breath please.  :)  

To tell the truth, I really just want to travel for fun. Take pictures and talk to folks because I'm having an adventure, not because I need data. Go for a really long walk. Meditate on the meaning of life. Chill out.

I actually do have some idea of at least the immediate future. After I graduate on 18 December (YAY!), I will be heading to France on the 21st for a two week stay with my good friend Anne.

Anne is an anthropologist who works in Paris. She was a postdoc in the Coweeta LTER lab (I have office space in the lab), but before that I toured her field site in southern France as part of a historical ecology field school. I will be going with her to Brittany (where her family lives) for Christmas and then we will be in Paris for New Year's. Other than hanging out with Anne, and maybe seeing the catacombs in Paris, I am leaving this trip up to the Adventure Fairy. Hopefully, I will have internet access at some point and can post pictures.

This trip is the culmination of a grand conspiracy by Anne and my other good friend John. John is an archaeologist who manages the Coweeta Lab in Baldwin and does all the tech stuff for Coweeta LTER. He might do other stuff, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he has connections with Delta and hooked me up with a cheap ticket to Paris. Both John and Anne are recent PhDs, and remembering their experience didn't want me to get into a funk. They also wanted to make sure I got a break before starting my new job (although they didn't know I would have a job when they started planning). John and Anne are two really amazing friends. THANKS!!!!

That's right. I have a postdoc fellowship starting in January at Penn State. I will be working in the Geography Department on a climate change project. Actually, the exact title is Climate Change Adaptation: Complex Challenges for Resilience under Climatic Uncertainties. Part of this project involves working with farmers, aid agencies, cooperative extension agents, universities in-country, etc. as a facilitator for iterative social learning so that folks can make their own decisions and come up with plans to adapt to climate change. It means that I will be going back to Africa as well - Ghana and Tanzania (possibly, I hope, Mozambique).

The position advertisement appeared on the EANTH listserve and then was sent to me directly by two of my committee members. I applied, kept working on my dissertation, and was contacted for an interview. My committee was contacted for reference letters. Dr. T interviewed me via Skype and 2 days later emailed me to offer the position.

Did I mention that the morning of the interview, my new postdoc adviser emailed me to ask for my CV? I was so nervous I forgot to include it in the original email application. I don't recommend this. I got incredibly lucky and must have had really good recommendation letters. Hard work and showing up does pay off in the end.

Teleporting & Viruses

This Wednesday I took a trip to Nelspruit to mail off 2 boxes of books. As I stood in line at Ressano Garcia border crossing on the return it really hit me. I have only one month left here in Mozambique. People have been asking me about leaving now for the past couple of months, but until I got that stamp it really didn't register that this was the last time I would be crossing into Mozambique at this border. I will be going to Kruger for a conference later in April, but I will cross the border in the park.

I will miss Mozambique. To tell you the truth, the only parts about the US that I have missed are my family and friends, and my washing machine. I will miss my friends here in Mozambique. No, I should say extended family. The communities of Madjadjane and Gala accepted me, taught me about their history, culture, and life with patience and generosity, helped me when I needed it, warned me to be extra careful in South Africa, were concerned when I was sick, shared what little they had, offered to build me a house, and asked me not to leave. I sometimes wish I had a teleporting machine or a portable hole that would allow me to travel easily from one country to another.

They (whoever they are) say that you can never really leave Africa once you have lived here. That it is a virus that infects your blood with longing. There is more than a grain of truth to this I think.

Safari in Botswana

I've been putting off blogging about Botswana, mainly because of what happened to Chris and I in Chobe National Park (well, in Kasane just outside the park gates really). Our rental car was broken into one night, not 10 feet from where we were sleeping in our tent. We are fine and the only thing taken was my computer bag. But of course, it was what was in the bag that matters - my passport, a plane ticket to Pt. Elizabeth for a conference, my laptop, data, some books and electronic equipment, some rands and metacais, pictures I had downloaded from the trip so far, and my Wookiee.

I can't believe someone stole my Wookiee. I'd love to have seen the look on their face when they pulled Chewbacca out of my bag. I brought my Chewbacca and Obi-Wan Kenobi figures along to take pictures in the Kalahari Desert for kicks. Silly, but hey, I was on a vacation.

The part that really had me worried was my passport. Everything else was pretty easy to replace (well except the pictures and market data) albeit expensive, and Chris and I are safe. It could have been much worse. But having your car broken into like that is still nerve wrecking.

I am still working on replacing my Mozambican visa. The temporary one I got in Pretoria runs out 20 August. I am blogging from a new laptop (an Acer 3680). I'll wait to replace the book I lost. South African Airways was really helpful in replacing my ticket - even if a paper ticket system is antiquated. My conference presentation went well and I managed to put together and deliver a presentation on the role of anthropology in conservation in less than a day. That also seemed to go well.

The Kasane Police were very nice, but I don't expect to see any of what I lost ever again. And we never made it to Victoria Falls. :(

Here are some pictures of our safari in Botswana post-theft. BTW I would still recommend visiting Botswana. Tracking rhinos and elephants on foot, poling the Okavanga Delta, and birding in the Kalahari is pretty amazing.

Getting fingerprinted at the Kasane Police Station. The Kasane CSI unit dusted our car for prints so we needed to have ours on file for the investigation.

Getting my new passport photo taken in Gabarone, Botswana. The US Embassy issued me a emergency passport within 4 hours. They had to run a background check and apparently I haven't done anything too horrible.

Many rural Botswanans use burros to get around. There are even cowboys (sorry, that picture got lost) who herd cattle on horseback in flipflops.

Botswanan road blocks - cattle are one of the most important thing to a Botswanan family.

Let's hope when the road is finished there is some money for a new sign.

Tenho saudade

Sometimes being apart from people and places puts things into better perspective. Over the past month, I've been on the road in Botswana and South Africa with my husband Chris. It was fantastic to see him and just be with him. I hadn't realized just how deeply I missed him until I saw him walk through the doors at Johannesburg's airport. We had many an adventure on our road trip through Botswana and I will post more pictures and text over the few days.

After he left for home in the States, via a brief stopover in northern Spain, I traveled down to Port Elizabeth, South Africa for the 2007 Society for Conservation Biology meetings. I gave 2 presentations, both of which seemed well received. Again, I will post more about that in the days to come. There is a small, but interesting, development regarding my talk about the historic wildlife trade in this region, but that is all I want to say for now. I'm not gonna count my chickens yet...

When the conference finished, I headed back to Maputo. I had to pick up a new set of keys, which then proceeded not to work. My keys were stolen in Botswana (more to come on that particular adventure). So, I called my building supervisor, Sr. Zimba (cool name, huh?). He got a locksmith out to drill out the padlock that closes the rebar door. All houses seem to have 2 doors here. The wooden one and the rebar door with a padlock. Double the protection, but a pain if you don't have the right keys. Anyway, for $6 he drilled out my lock using a hand drill that matches the one I inherited from my Grandpa Shaffer. Now I have another use for the drill. Woohoo!

After that, I walked over to my favorite neighborhood grocer, stopping to greet people along the way. My apartment guards, the shoe repair/shine man that sits under the tree by the cafe, the young man who sells phone calls on a little table outside my door, the little kids that play in the parking lot behind my apartment, the ladies that sell vegetables and fruits to me from the sidewalk... even the grocer asked where I'd been and how I was doing. Just today, I dropped into the archives to get a paper and the archivists not only remembered me after a 3 month absence, we had a really interesting conversation about why I was replacing that particular paper and the economic conditions in southern Africa in general.

Then there was just the comfort of a familiar setting too. My things, my bed, no living out of a bag or the back of a small car, the warm temperatures, the sound of Portuguese and Rhonga/Changaan, the constant stream of greetings and well wishing, the bumpty-bump of a chapa ride accompanied by loud music (Ridin' Dirty is a great chapa song), my hot shower, the rolling electrical blackouts... Okay, so I wasn't so nostalgic for the electricity thing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that some part of me really missed Mozambique - the place, the people, the atmosphere. I have to say that I was more than a bit surprised. I still miss my husband, Chris, lots, and certainly miss my parents, my brother, my in-laws, and my friends because I love them all. I don't know if I would go as far to say I missed my family and Mozambique for the same reasons. But I think that there is a certain element of longing in each of the cases.

Perhaps this is what the Portuguese speakers mean when they talk about Tenho saudade. Lusophones say that saudade is not definable in the English language. From what I can gather, it includes ideas of longing, love, nostalgia, pining, missing, and some indefinable aspect that I'm told you know it when you experience it. At any rate, I'm going to use it to cover both my feelings for my family and Mozambique - even if the feelings are slightly different.

O Coração: Você É Uma Coisa Muita Frágil

On Mother's Day my parents called me. It started out well, but then my Mom said, "You Dad has some news for you." Her tone of voice was not good. It was the same tone, and almost the same words, she used when she told me she had cancer (my Mom is in remission).

My Dad is 80 years old. He has had 2 (or 3?) heart attacks, open heart surgery for a triple bypass, a couple of stents, and a pacemaker. He also has prostrate cancer, but lots of older men do. They usually die of old age first. In the past few years, Dad has gotten more fragile (cracked ribs). He falls a lot because the medications he takes make him dizzy. Despite all that he was still climbing up on the roof to replace shingles last fall.

So I waited for the news I knew that I was going to dread. The only question being, what is going to bring an end to my Dad's life?

"My heart is fibulated." Huh? His words, which may or may not be a complete understanding of what the doctor told him. The top chambers of his heart no longer work; the muscle is all stretched out like a rubber band. The bottom (larger) chambers are the only part ensuring that blood still pumps through his circulatory system. The doctor disconnected the pacemaker wires to the top half to save on the battery (Save on the battery? WTF?). There is a lot about artial fibulation online, but it is difficult to sort through. I'm still reacting right now.

My Dad tried half-heartedly (bad pun, but my Dad always appreciates a pun) to crack some jokes. I told him to take it easy because I want him to see me walk at graduation. He said he would be there regardless. It made me think of my friend Li-Kuang who just graduated with her doctorate from UGA. Her father died while she was in the process of writing her dissertation. During her defense, she placed a photographed of her parents (both are deceased) on the stand so that they would be with her in spirit. I'm being selfish, but I really don't want to put a photograph of my Dad on the lectern when I defend. I want him there to give me a hug.

I think that my Mom started to sense I was dissolving into banshee wailing mode. I do that sometimes - like when my parents tell me they have a potentially terminal illness, and I can't fucking do a thing because I'm not a deity and I live on the other side of the planet. They got off the phone in a hurry, despite having spent an hour trying to reach me.

My Dad kept telling me not to come home and that he is very proud of me. That I can't do anything. I don't know what to do. I would rather see him now while he is still alive and we can enjoy one another's company. Once he's gone, it is too late and I don't want to regret that for the rest of my life. We don't always see eye to eye, but he is still my Dad. Still the Dad that built me a tree house, put up with all my questions about how stuff worked and why, taught me to fix things around the house and on my car, shared music with me, pulled me out from underwater under an overturned tractor, told me stories and sang me to sleep when I was little...

I've known my Dad's time was getting close for a while. He's 80 years old and doesn't follow the doctors orders about his diet or health very well. It still sucks.

I haven't been sleeping well, but last night and tonight I can't sleep at all. When I am alone, all I want to do is cry. My chest feels all hollow and it gets hard to breathe.

My Dad will find out how long he has on 25 May. Meanwhile, my younger brother is considering quitting his job to go home and help my parents out (depending on the news). He lives in Pennsylvania and is a little closer to them. This is the downside of my work - being far from my family when they need me most. I don't know what to do.

Eye All Better

Thank you to everyone that sent me an email with best wishes on getting better. I wasn't looking for that, but it was a pleasant surprise. I mainly just wanted to write about going to the doctors. Thanks for the sympathy (and the offer of goggles!).

It sounds like many people run into strange allergies, infections, and conditions in the field that we wouldn't necessarily come into contact with at home (conjunctivitis in Fiji, skin infections in India,...). Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my friends and colleagues all tend to travel to places with strange microbial fauna, warm moist conditions, and less than sanitary (by US standard) conditions. Of course, US standards vary depending on location, but most people these days don't run around barefoot on farms or have dust covering everything. Right.

So for anyone reading this and contemplating travel, finding treatment overseas is realitively easy. You can even buy drugs direct from a pharmacist without a perscription (just make sure you can spell it and know how much you are supposed to take - esp. if the pharmacist can't speak English). But if you can, bring antihistimines. I have loratadine (generic Claritin), benedryl gel, and a bee sting kit (just in case, I've had reactions to bee stings in the past). We humans might think we're in charge, but we're not. There are more insects, and definitely more microbes, in the world than us. (Insert cockroach with an evil laugh here). Plus wash your hands whenever possible and don't touch your face. Until I had this eye thing, I never realized just how much I touched my eyes during the day (thanks Josh).

I now look normal now. No swollen eye, no listing boxer-look, no overdone fuschia eyeshadow. I still don't know what caused the reaction. It will be filed along with the hives outbreak I had in Northern Ireland. That was fun. Chris and I think it might have been some strange clove-flavored candy I ate that gave me a week-long bout of hives. Itchy blotches covered me from neck to knee. But since it was Northern Ireland in the middle of summer, I could cover them all up without looking like a freak. I kept the occasional scratch to a minimum so the locals wouldn't think I was a meth addict or something. (When you live on the I-5 corridor on the US West Coast you see a few things.)