Power outages and General Conference

Until about one this afternoon, the power here in our house was out because there was a problem with our power meter—it was great, though, because it meant that after I got home from home teaching, I spent a good while on the roof studying the scriptures and listening to conference talks and BYU devotionals on my iPod. I’ve done this sometimes before, but as I was sitting there today, looking out over the fields behind our office and the train tracks that pass by, with so many people walking one direction or the other along them, I really felt that I needed to do this more often. Sitting there reminds me where I am—the view from there helps me to appreciate the beauty of this country. Sometimes after work it’s easy to get trapped inside the house, reading or editing something for work or writing emails—I need to take more time out to really appreciate this place, and just be. I think that’s still missing in my life.

General Conference started tonight (well, tonight for us in Mozambique—first session was at 6 PM, second at 10), and so far it’s been amazing (General Conference being the twice-annual LDS meetings when the Prophet speaks and all the other General Authorities of the Church). It hit me between sessions how much I’ve grown to really love and look forward to General Conference—it’s like a spiritual feast twice a year, two days in which the feeling of the Spirit is almost continual, and inspiration and insight into my own life just pours out. I love having the chance to hear the words of the Lord’s servants. I love studying the talks as they come out afterwards, but there’s something about the first time you hear them live, about the insights that come and the personal bits of revelation regarding my own life that come, that don’t come nearly as often when reading them afterwards. It’s like what I picture it would be like to be present during one of the revelations received by Joseph Smith, or during King Benjamin’s address, sitting at the feet of spiritual giants and having the chance to drink in of their wisdom and the words of the Lord that come through them.

The Church released an official statement on Cheney’s graduation speech the other day, but though I sat down with it for a long time yesterday to mull it over and think about it, it’s a bit late to talk much in depth about that—that’ll wait ‘til tomorrow.

List of things to do before I die

A good friend recently made one of these, and it made me realize that although I have always had plenty of things that belong on a list like this, I’ve never sat down to actually make one. So here goes:

-Learn to play the congas/pandeiro/tabla/more hand percussion in general

-Learn to play the piano (soul-style—like, being able to play Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone songs)

-Learn to play the guitar well

-Learn to ably sing tenor, baritone and bass/be able to create or find the harmony to any given song

-Record an album with a band I am in (that is, I’ve recorded EPs with bands before, but never a full-blown album, complete with liner notes and all that stuff)

-Become adept at recording in a recording studio/work in a recording studio

-Record music from all over the world, especially songs of struggle

-Become fluent in an indigenous African language

-Become fluent in Spanish

-Become a really good soccer player, learn how to play futvolei (the Brazilian version of beach volleyball where you can only use your feet)

-Live/work in Brazil for an extended period of time

-Live/work in South Africa, or another English-speaking southern African country

-Live/work in India, or one of the Pacific islands (not because they’re at all similar, but because they’re about on equal levels of priority)

-Get a doctorate (most likely an Ed. D.)

-Get married in the temple

-Be actively present at the birth of all my children (preferably not in a hospital)

-See my children go on missions and get married in the temple

-Learn my family’s ancestral Swiss-German dialect and travel to our ancestral homeland again, being able to communicate with the people (already did this once with the family, but my German skills, much less Swiss-German, were nil—also I think I was a bit young to fully appreciate it)

Yay yay TFA

So I’m a wanted man. That is, in the good, professional sense of the word. There’s a charter school in Brooklyn that’s contacted me through Teach For America and wants to set up a phone interview in the next week or two—I talked to my TFA advisor this afternoon and she was giving me the scoop on their program and what to expect in the interview. I’m really pumped, as I’d really like to work for a charter school, in an environment where there’s a team effort towards pushing student achievement—it seems really, really ideal. The stricter dress code/uniform would mean no more Birkenstock-hippie-professor clothes options for me, but I think I can handle that. Good thing this here body’s more than rainment.

Goodnight Moon

Salomão’s gotten into the habit of asking me to play him a few songs on guitar while he lays on the sofa right before going to bed. The lullaby jukebox—this is a new role I’m starting to really dig. As much as Salomão (the Care For Life national director, in his 30s), is a bit old for the part, it seems like a pleasant foreshadowing of lullabies with little Rolfs to come.

The inner anthropologist wants out to play

As I was riding the chapa (minibus) today, I had a couple of those aspiring-anthropologist moments where I just wish I had a couple months to spend as the guy collecting fares, or the driver, or something, because there’s altogether too many interesting things going on in a chapa for them all to go unrecorded somewhere. The people with chickens or big bricks of soap or 20-packs of little Cheeto-y snacks that they bought downtown and are taking home to their peripheral neighborhood to sell; the people who manage to fit a piece of aluminum siding or about 10 pipes under peoples’ feet for a construction project at home; the teenage guy with his earphones on, blasting some music that’s trying to compete with the trance beat the radio’s pumping out; and me.

I love chapas. How could you not want to study such an amazing little microcosm of Mozambican society?

I’d also love to have an extra year or two just to really throw myself into learning the local indigenous languages, Sena and Ndau—I know how to greet people in both, but because of all the work to be done at Care For Life and at church, I haven’t really had the time I’d like to really throw myself into them. And then there’s the mud-brick house I’ve been dreaming of building in one of the villages we work in every since I got here…why’s life gotta be so full of stuff that there’s never any time for the most intriguing bits?

America, the land that never has been yet, and yet must be

I've loved Langston Hughes since high school, but I only quite recently did I really begin to study or appreciate this poem. I love finding treasures like this--there are few feelings as satisfying as finding art which manages to express feelings that you've felt so strongly but never quite been able to quite put into words.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.


(America never was America to me.)


Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.


(It never was America to me.)


O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.


(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")


Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.


I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!


I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.


Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."


The free?


Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.


O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.


Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!


Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Worried about things here and there

I’ve been following all of the budding controversy over Cheney’s speaking appointment at BYU’s commencement this year, both in the official news articles being circulated about it and in the explosion of debate about it online (especially on Facebook, in the various groups organized in opposition to or in support of him coming), and it’s really gotten me thinking, not just about this particular case of collision between what could easily be perceived as a mixture of religious and political interests, but about my various levels of loyalty to my God, my church and my government in general. Even though this Cheney incident doesn’t affect me personally all that directly, it brings up all the same issues about religious and political loyalties that I’ve run into before and still feel like I’m sorting out in my head. As I was reading over various people’s comments and seeing the whole Cheney debate get more and more heated, it made me really feel like sitting down and working out for myself my list of priorities in terms of my loyalties—so that’s what I ended up spending the last few hours doing.

Above all, there is my loyalty to my Heavenly Father and my Lord Jesus Christ—before I’m considered an American, a liberal, or a Democrat, I would hope that I could be thought of as someone trying to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and live as He did. And that leads directly to the LDS Church, which I wholeheartedly believe to be Christ’s church, and the Kingdom of God on earth. Through the covenants I’ve made, I profess to be willing to sacrifice anything in my life to the going forth of the work of this Church, and I hope and pray daily for the strength to do that. As a result, there is my loyalty to the leadership of the LDS Church, which I truly believe to be chosen by God, and in the case of the Prophet, President Hinckley, I truly believe him to be the mouthpiece of God on earth. I remember being touched by one time when my mission president said that he would step in front of a train if President Hinckley told him to, and I think the reason that touched me so much is because as he said it, I could feel in my heart that I wanted nothing more than to be the same way. Christ said “he that receiveth my servants receiveth me” (D&C 84:36), and I really believe that.

Second, there is my loyalty to my family. My family is the only thing that I can carry with me from this life, and the relationship I have with these people I love is sacred to me. Second only to my hope that I can live as a disciple of Christ is my hope to be able to honor the name of those who have brought me into this world and given me so much.

Third, there is my loyalty to the family of God, all throughout the world. Before looking at the peoples of the world as Americans, Brazilians, Mozambicans, Iraqis, Israelis, Chinese, Indian, Burmese, French, or whatever, I hope that I look at them as my brothers and sisters in the family of God. I hope that my loyalty to them, and my desire to do whatever I can to help promote justice and peace and happiness among any and all of them, transcends my loyalty to the country I happened to be born in.

Fourth, there is my loyalty to my country. This is easily the one I have struggled the most with—as much as I know I owe a debt to my country and the privileges it has granted me, there are so many times when I can remember feeling more shame than pride in being an American. As much as current events in my lifetime have triggered that, though, I continue to love and respect and even desire to defend the ideals upon which America was built. Ever since 9/11, when the prospect of being called upon to take up arms for my country suddenly seemed a lot more real, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how willing I would be to do so. On the basis of my religious beliefs, I toyed with the idea of being a pacifist for a good while, and considered the possibility of petitioning for conscientious objector status if I ever were called upon to serve in the military. As I have studied out and thought hard about those same religious beliefs, though, I have felt that because of them I couldn’t turn down a call to serve my country. I know it would be really, really hard for me to deal with the ramifications of doing so (I can already imagine myself practicing to be a bad shot in basic training so as to avoid the chance of actually hitting anyone), but I really don’t think that I could feel right with myself if I weren’t willing to defend and possibly give my life in thanks to a country that has given me so much. And I know that if my family were ever in real harm, I could never sit by and let them be hurt without standing up to defend them.

This may seem to be coming out of nowhere, but every time something like this Cheney situation comes up, where I’m forced to sit down and think about where my loyalties lie in terms of God (and church) and country, it bothers me when I feel uncertainty in myself, when I end up wondering where my loyalties do lie. It gives me peace to think these things out, as much as the particular solutions in each situation are never easy to pin down—which is why, as much as I sincerely consider Cheney to represent the worst of what America offers to the world, I still don’t really know what specific course of action I would choose to act on those convictions if I were still at BYU right now.

There’s also enough going on around here to keep one from feeling like there’s lots of time to think about problems so far away—on Thursday some old Soviet arms kept in storage in Maputo since the civil war days exploded, killing 93 people (or at least that’s the count so far, there’s 300ish wounded, and with Mozambique’s medical capacities the number of dead will probably keep rising). Even though Maputo’s a day’s drive away, that feels very close to home. For whoever read this, please include the victims in your prayers.

My prediction is PAIN

I don’t think I ever would’ve guessed that I would be spending a Friday night in Mozambique watching a pirated-Rocky-movie marathon with my roomies. We only made it to Rocky 3, but my gut tells me we should stop here, because there’s nowhere to go but down after Rocky fought Mr. T.

Quit yo jibba jabba.

A chance for Utah County to get shot in the face

So according to the Salt Lake Tribune, Dick Cheney is the tentatively scheduled speaker for this April’s BYU Commencement Exercises, a speaking position usually occupied by an apostle of the LDS Church.

Dude.

DUDE.

If I were graduating this April, I think I’d be exploding about now, but as it is, it’s something more along the lines of complete and utter disbelief. What planet am I on?!

My head asplode

I feel about equal parts deep respect and complete bewilderment towards people that are secretaries and enjoy it. Like, for a living and stuff. I mean, even just doing it part-time for the district presidency folks in church a couple times a week making phone calls and doing paperwork and taking notes on meetings tends to make me kinda go bulgy-eyed and produce Gaaaaah noises.

So yeah, you secretarial folk should feel no threats to your job security coming from my direction. You can do your thing and have your official day in late April—you have my blessing.

Done—DONE, I say!

Today I finished the first rough draft of this ginormous curriculum! 156 pages, DONE! Well, fine, first-draft-done, in need of hours and hours of revision and editing, but still—DONE! Feeling of accomplishment, you are MINE.

I spent a good chunk of my evening reading Barack Obama speeches off of his official campaign website, and with each one I fell in more and more manlove with that man. Especially this one here detailing his stance on the Iraq War—it’s exactly how I feel on the subject. I can’t remember the last time I’ve read or heard a living politician’s remarks and felt that way, ever.

The biggest thing that I note in him is his integrity. He is genuine, sincere. He is who he is, you don’t have to guess who he is from back behind his politics. I think people will notice that, and be drawn to it. I can’t wait for 2008.

The Walking Man Walks

That title can be referencing James Taylor or Shake Your Peace, I'll leave that up to y'all (though I'd personally side with Shake Your Peace).


I had to go downtown today, and I got off the chapa (van/microbus) about halfway there ‘cause I felt like walking. It was a really nice walk. Feet are definitely underrated.

Night Smell

I love night smell—not dry Utah night smell, but warm, damp, slightly windy night smell. I smelled it tonight as I was spending some thinking time outside, and it made me think of Manaus, and Texas, and Michigan, and all the places where night feels like a warm blanket.

St. Patrick's Self-Improvement

I made a St. Patrick’s Day resolution today—not that my resolution was particularly Irish, but since I happened to make it today I figured there was no good reason to leave the Irish out of it.

I’ve been realizing lately that over the last couple of months, particularly since I got back from spending the holidays at home, I’ve tended to be a lot more negative and critical in my general outlook, especially with regards to work and the foibles of my co-workers (especially João’s), and that has really, really grown to bother me. It’s gotten to the point where I’m much quicker to spot errors and flaws than recognize what’s good and well-done, and I think my attitude has begun to affect my co-workers, too. And I hate it—I hate seeing that in myself, especially when for most of life I’ve prided myself on striving to be the opposite. Granted, things are pretty stressful here right now with everything that’s pushing to get finished in the next bit (the curriculum, the operational plan for our whole program), and there are a bunch of new administrators getting trained (Gil Vicente, the new program director, Solomon, the new national director for Care For Life), and lots of things start falling apart a bit both at work and in the church as João (who’s both the big dog at Care For Life and the top lay leader in the church here) feels overwhelmed and starts forgetting things, so it’s easy to feel overwhelmed sometimes and feel critical of João when I’m expected to pick up the slack, but that’s no excuse for the way I’ve used that as an excuse to focus on the negative.

Tonight was an example of that, when there was a church leadership meeting that was supposed to happen, and João canceled it at the last minute because he’s been getting really sick—something I hadn't heard about until arriving at the church after leaving another meeting early to make sure I arrived on time. Between having had to ditch what I was doing and not having enough money on me for transportation home (I was counting on riding home with João), I started getting really mad at João, for getting sick I suppose, as ridiculous as that sounds. And as I got madder and madder, I realized just how ridiculous I was being, getting mad at him for getting sick—and I thought of a talk I’d been studying today by Elder Bednar (LDS church leader), and how getting mad, or getting offended, is a choice that I was making. As much as I already understood this logically, I began to realize how much energy I was wasting on resenting and complaining, energy that wouldn’t accomplish anything good or positive or useful. I ended up walking a good part of the way home to give myself time to think and cool down (and listen to that particular talk again on my iPod—good ol’ technology, as much as I don’t love it as much as Kip does), and as I thought, I resolved to change. I realized really don’t want to waste my last few months of Mozambique stewing and stressing. So, starting today (Thanks, St. Paddy), I’m ditching the negative funk. I’m choosing to be the Rolf I want to be.

Of all the restaurants, in all the world....we go out again for Chinese

I can’t get over the irony of how the only restaurant João (my crazily-picky Brazilian boss) agrees to go to in all of Beira, a city with at least 10 really interesting and good Mozambican-cuisine-style restaurants that I can think of, is a mediocre Chinese place where he always gets the sweet-and-sour chicken. Bleeeeeeeeh. I will never cease to get a kick out of their elevator-style mood music, though—it’s a whole bunch of early 60s tunes from old Westerns and the Everly Brothers, played on wind pipes and Chinese zithers. Pure awesomeness.

I’m palpably close to finishing this ginormous curriculum. And very, very excited about it.

Rice and beans? You mean nectar of the gods

Before getting all deep n’ stuff, I just felt like saying—I love rice and beans. I could eat rice and beans for the rest of my life. I can’t wait ‘til Nikki (another intern, and a veggie) gets here in May and it’ll be easier to facilitate regular veggie meals, ‘cause the times when they appear are like little oases in a sea of red meat. Chega de carne, cara.

I love how close I’ve been able to grow to the Care For Life field officers here, working closely with them, getting to know them personally, feeling like a friend and confidante to them just as much as a supervisor/coworker. I was thinking about that today after hanging out and talking to them during lunch, and I think I could really settle down and have a very happy life here, over time being able to become more and more a part of this place and its people. A big part of me, the part of me that pushed me into anthropology, would love nothing more than that—as much as no outsider can really completely get inside the head of someone who’s grown up and spent their whole life in another culture and another way of thinking, the greatest level of love that I can imagine is trying as hard as you can to do so, to spend your life trying to understand as best you can the situation and life of your brother, to get as close as you can to true empathy and understanding.

The thing is that by doing that completely, I’d by force have to separate myself from my family, my friends and my life back home—which I would never want to give up. But I think there’s a nice findable balance in between there somewhere.

Real Life and Blogs

So, I figured it’s about time I joined up with all my self-respecting 21^st-century peeps and started a blog. My first entry isn't as light-hearted as I would like, but hey.

Today I’ve been thinking more about what to do about Anastáncia, my good friend here who wants to marry me. We’ve talked and I tried to make it as clear as I could that I really feel strongly that we shouldn’t, but just this morning she told me that she dreamed about me and still loves me and really feels like I’m not here and we didn’t meet by accident. She talked about how it isn’t easy for her, especially when above and beyond her wanting it, so many mutual friends and people from church want us to be together—she’s even asked about it by the missionaries sometimes. I know where she’s coming from and I know that it’s hard, but at the same time I don’t know what else I can do when I really have felt strongly that we shouldn’t date.

From my time here, and all the talks I’ve had with buddies my age about their love lives and such, it’s really striking how different the cultural notion of courtship is here, and seemingly in Southeastern Africa in general. Here, there isn’t this emphasis on soulmates that Westerners always get stuck on through our lovely piles upon piles of rubbish romantic comedies, this notion of finding someone who completely understands you and completes you—here, it’s a matter of finding a good man that will treat you well. There isn’t the same expectation of commonality, of finding someone who works with you, of dating someone long enough to have seen them in all their different modes of being them, of being sure that you can function together in your day-to-day. You find someone you know is a good person that you like, and you marry them. And it works, it totally works for people here—but I really don’t think it would work for me. I think Hollywood goes way too far with all the myths about soulmates and such and creates completely unrealistic expectations, but at the same time I can’t deny that I expect some sense of shared experience, of shared perspective, of a similar way of looking at the world. The idealist in me really isn’t comfortable with the notion that cultural differences could impede a successful relationship—it seems to xenophobic, bordering on racist, when that’s my reason for feeling a relationship wouldn’t work out with a girl here, or anywhere else. But at the same time, cultural differences are barriers, there’s truth to that, and I don’t really feel like I can deny it—a cross-cultural relationship could work, depending on the circumstances, but that doesn’t mean I should try to force myself to believe this one would.

I’ve been in enough relationships to know I could find someone that I share more of my sacred things (not just membership in the church in and of itself, but things that are important/sacred to me) with than Anastáncia. Anastáncia and I could be very happy, I think—but I think we both could be happier with people more like us. I don’t know if that’s what she necessarily wants, but it’s what I want, and I need to be honest with myself, as much as I don’t want to hurt her.

I was listening to a Bill Withers song that I think completely captures how I’m feeling towards Anastáncia, and since all the truly hip blogs are all about the media references, here goes:

I wish you flowers sunshine and smiles
I wish you children that grow to make you proud
I wish you pretty things to wear
Sweet things to smell
I wish you well

I wish you good friends that always treat you fair
Wanna wish you ribbons to tie around your hair
I wish you truckloads of cheer
and many happy years
I wish you well

Wanna wish you freedom to do the things you love
Wanna wish you blessings and kindness from above
Wanna wish you sunlight through the clouds
I hope you laugh out loud
I wish you well