Monthly Archives: June 2012

When Homesickness Dampens Wanderlust

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A month into a year-long contract teaching at a university in Piura, Peru, is not the time to realize I long for home. Nevertheless, here I am, looking out upon the desiccated flora and the abysmal color palette of the flat land surrounding me.

My clothes are sweat-soaked after walking a mile from work where language and cultural barriers have worn my nerves like singed hair. The maid hovers, prattling on in indecipherable Castellano, making me want to cry for privacy. Horns from mototaxis outside the house— just 20 feet from my bedroom—jumble my thoughts. Their Latinized version of Jennifer Lopez’s “Get on the Floor” that plays like a soundtrack on repeat. My spirit is jumbled as a jigsaw puzzle.

 

Trying to Revive My Travel Mojo in Peru's Desert

Auditory fatigue, it’s called. Auditory fatigue alone is almost enough to warrant homesickness.

 

It’s more than that though. It’s exhaustion from life abroad. Exhaustion over converting currency from Peruvian soles into US dollars for half my transactions to determine how much I’m actually spending. Exhaustion from negotiating for each moto or taxi ride. From day-long translating Spanish on signs and in speech and the cultural meanings beneath all of it. I’m tired of my feet being dirty as a peasant’s. I’m tired of cold water in showers with exposed electrical cords, of Internet connections as high-tech as rural American electricity in 1932, of sidewalks whose unpredictable topography requires walking with eyes cast downward.

 

I’m done with a place so conservative that the existence of homosexuality is eschewed, so artless that art and architecture books brought from home serve as relief, so absent of architectural design that I’ve taken to create it in my imagination during my long walks to and from work.

 

Watch out for that WTF in the sidewalk

 

Mostly, I miss the West’s 21st century. There’s a certain liberation in taking things for granted. Yet we don’t know this until we’ve lived abroad. It’s sheltering as a down comforter. Moving abroad– especially serial expatriation– tears that away. It leaves scabs that become mental and physical scars.

 

Drop back a century in time when entering El Peru

 

We learn to treat homesickness with periodic trips back home. They work like Rolaids– but with nine months more in my stay here, it’s as if my medicine cabinet lacks that elixir. So what happens when wanderlust devolves to homesickness? Do we resort to surgery, abandon our post and return to the safe confines of the States?

 

No. I made a commitment. I asked for a long-term job with a living wage. I got it. Let me stop my whining that my wish didn’t look like what I expected. Besides, Peru has an energy, a pulse audible beneath the auditory exhaustion. It tells me there’s a lot to learn here. It’s not home. But it’s a good resting spot until home calls me back for good.

 

I turn back from the desert view and walk to the semi-paved road before my house. I’m not in the mood to haggle and therefore I simply agree to the four soles (or $1.50) the cab charges to take me to Starbucks. There, things begin to look up. Festive employees greet me by name and make my latte just as I like it. The AC cools my body, the free wifi calms my road-weary nerves. For the moment it’s a spa to ensure the health of my wanderlust. It’s a substitute for a real American moment. I’m a closer to 21st-century relief.

 

Fiorella, one of my favorite baristas

Trust in Modular, Mobile Schools in Southeast Asia

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Global efforts to build schools in southeast Asia have been in the news lately, and for good reason

With ongoing border disputes and economic turmoil affecting poorer nations in the region, providing a sound education to the children is near impossible when they can’t even rely on the availability of a school building. Mobile modular schools may be the solution.

 

Images Courtesy of Building Trust International

 

The Building Trust International’s recent competition, known as School 4 Burma, is a global assistance effort which hopes to make a difference. The non-profit organisation offers design assistance to needy communities and individuals, assessing problem areas, finding sustainable, economical solutions for aid, and providing buildings and infrastructure. These core actions have blossomed into advocating and educating the principles of socially-aware design, providing an accessible resource on humanitarian design projects, and offering a structure for the crossover of information between design professionals.
During a visit last year to Mae Sot, a town on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, Trust officials saw many schools being built for the 13,000 displaced children in the area. Nonetheless, it seemed, however, like a futile effort, according to David Cole, a founding partner of the Trust. “The Burmese community does not have a right to own land in Thailand. Therefore it was a common story that the land that a new school was built on would have the rent raised, and the children and teachers (would be) forced to leave their school building (because) they could not pay the higher rent,” he said.

 


A solution arose: a competition to find designs for modular, mobile schools that could be easily assembled and disassembled as rents made the land too expensive or war arose again.

 

Entries came in from more than 30 countries, and the winning proposal was submitted by Amadeo Bennetta and Daniel LaRossa, of Berkeley, California. It uses an adaptable framework that balances prefabricated structural elements with locally-crafted, modular bamboo panels. Entirely flat-packed components can rapidly morph from a flatbed truck into a courtyard school, a single building, or independent multi-use units. This school design will help to serve some 350 displaced Mae Sot children.

 

The competition’s entry fees will be used to cover the costs of raising the first-place school design, slated for construction in June.

 

“The charity plans to work closely with the Kwe Ka Baung School, community leaders, and other aid agencies in the area to ensure that the development of the design continues with their input,” Cole said.

 

The Trust’s current competition concerns designing affordable, single-occupancy housing for those affected by poverty in developed nations.

 

This story originally ran in Perspective, a Hong Kong-based space design magazine.

 

Writers Dig These Podcasts

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Since doing an article on podcasts back in 2005 or so, before most US households knew what the word meant, I’ve been hooked on them. Podcasts about writing have always been there for me. They’ve been escape outlets, wise words from someone who understood the pits and pimples of a writer’s life, and audio magazines that function as well as Poets & Writers.

My writing– and my taste in podcasts– has changed, however, since 2005. Therefore it was time to search for new shows. I sought shows that interview substantial literary authors and offered useful insight into the publishing industry. Here are some I recommend– or don’t recommend, as the case may be.

 

Can't tell you much about the subscription-only web site, but the podcast rocks

Radio Litopia

This podcast came to me when A Way with Words did an interview on the radio show version of this British social media site for writers. One listen hooked me. Shows range from 20 minutes to an hour.

Things to like  English literary agent Peter Cox’s wry sense of humor, British and American content (co-host literary lawyer Donna Ballman), technology in publishing (beware authors– and publishers– of the Amazon.com-industry complex). It’s frequently and regularly updated and has radio-show sound quality.

Anecdote One show briefly discussed a lawsuit filed by John Wiley & Sons, publisher of the Dummies books. Wiley, who publishes a Dummies book on BitTorrent, sued BitTorrent in a case involving 26 users exchanging their books. Yes, it is a circuitous argument. A fun one.

First a lit journal then a podcast

New Letters on the Air

I discovered this one in the process of submitting a memoir piece to the New Letters journal. This weekly podcast features one-on-one interviews with award-winning writers, all in half-hour episodes with professional recording quality. As the web site says, “It’s like eavesdropping on intimate conversations with favorite writers who reveal secrets about their creative methods.”

Things to like   Professional sound quality, excellent means of learning for writers hoping to be published but also for literary readers. The authors come from diverse backgrounds such as Sherwin Bitsui, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Anne Enright.

Anecdote   Urrea, in a recent interview, told a fascinating anecdote from his own life. Evidently his family told him he was somehow related to a saint, which he thought for years was filial folklore until “medicine paths began to open up”. Well on his way into writing a book about it, the saint showed up. He also told the shocking story of his father’s death. I hope you become as compelled to read him as I did after this interview.  

 

Books on the Nightstand

With a primary purpose of book suggestions, the two cohosts of this podcast work at Random House. For around half an hour they discuss a couple of books at length and discuss the characteristics and iconic writers in various genres. Show topics have also included the American literary canon, recovering from a disappointing book by a favorite author, and imprints. This is most definitely not for book snobs.

Things to dislike  I’ve tried three of these half-hour shows. Only to be left feeling like I was chewing on gristle. None of the titles they’ve discussed, save William Faulkner’s, have piqued my interest. Note: They do not discuss the publishing industry. Those sensitive to nonprofessional recording, steer clear.

Anecdote   The cohosts seem self-congratulatory to be reading a different Faulkner title in honor of 2012 being the 50th anniversary of the writer’s death.

It’s the weekend. Take this opportunity while gardening or walking around the neighborhood to check out these podcasts on your MP3 player. May they be as useful for you as they are for me. Drop me a line if you know of others I should review.