Special Needs in Brits

"Don't Get Her Arrested"

Here are some of the photos from my three days in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where I worked with Radio Dialogue. Despite many fears, the trip was incredible-- I have never been met with such kindness. The resulting print story will be in the Global Journalist Magazine, and (hopefully) the multimedia piece in the Mail And Guardian Online. Stay posted!

Where the Dirt Meets Concrete on Main Road

The soles of my worn running shoes slap the pavement and my eyes water, absorbing the dust and smoke encircling Main Street. I try to meet the downcast eyes of the men and women walking past me, pushing up the treacherous hill. Some are hypnotized in transition: solely seeking home, a warm meal, and a bed in which to rest their heads. I speed down the curved decline, watching them carry grocery bags up -- sauntering from where the taxis have dropped them, up to the bus stop at the top of the hill. They pass where the dirt turns to concrete, where the sidewalk cracks in sharp slabs and trips me up.

The things I love and hate.

A dark figure is in the distance. He isn’t walking straight. When I get to him I don’t know if he will sway in to me, if he will speak ill to me, or if he will grin with all his teeth. “Nice legs.”

So I will say hello to everyone; the ones who match me with a kind smile recall my humility. But it is a warped game. At the root of my friendliness is fear. Because maybe if I make eye contact with this man I’m not sure I can trust, he won’t mug me.

The energy from the evening traffic is like a shot of adrenaline. The anxiety from the honking cars, speeding taxis, propels me forward. I cough on the fumes, resenting how they restrict my breath. I imagine the people driving by and wonder how they laugh at my struggle.

Later, another man races down the concrete hill on a side street, coming toward me. He’s wearing jeans and a dark zip-up top. When he gets to me he fiddles with the headphones that are falling out of his ears. I can’t help but wonder if he is running from a crime scene, or just going for a jog in normal clothes. I exhale hard, resenting myself for such skepticism.

But even the thieves look like businessmen here, with nice cars whose doors they leave open so they can make a getaway on a busy street and disappear into traffic.

My knees pound against the dirt, my arches curving to adjust to the protruding rocks. I lift my knees higher and push the balls of my feet into the ground. The ache verges on unbearable. I watch each face. And somehow, through my physical pain, hope to grasp each hardship.

But they just stare at me with equally watery eyes.

I glide down the final hill, over the dirt, over the concrete, over the broken glass, and feel like I am flying. I barely notice the homeless man sleeping between two trees covered in a blanket, surrounded by his only belongings. When I soar past him, I momentarily loathe myself for having the freedom to run, for having the strength. And, most of all, for not stopping.

A Vuvuzela Story: Game One

They start at five a.m. and I am immediately awake, watching the sun come in through the stained curtains. 

VOO VOO VOO  VOO-VOO-VOO

They’ll persist until the night folds into morning, when sirens yell through the streets and fans finally turn in.

It is a constant hum. On TV it sounds like the accented announcer is screaming over giant pestering buzzards. But up close they’re sharp and catch in your ear until your head shakes.

On the street they come up behind me, blaring in time until a response sounds deeper from someone else a few meters ahead. When the two meet, the call and response continues and everyone dances around on the sidewalk. It carries on for several minutes then the group splits apart, carrying on down the street until each meet another.

In a moment of quietness I smile at a car guard who is beaming at me through white teeth. “It is here,” he says.

On the train to the fan park there is a baby next to me, pressed against her mother’s chest. Orange earplugs are bright against her skin and she is oblivious to the party in the car.

There is no point in talking; all words are overridden by celebration.

The women, draped in flags are seated and singing in Zulu, the men blow their horns echoing the women's voices. Everyone is swaying, stomping, a mob of green and yellow whistle wildly, their faces painted with the flag, hair covered with Mohawk wigs. Mobs of people press in to the cars blowing red horns and small whistles. The doors open and the party spills out into the streets.

The Central Business District in Cape Town is tame compared to Johannesburg, but we get out, following the instructions of a disheveled passenger in yellow pants. He said to find the waterfront. He turns to disappear in the crowd, on the butt of his pants in scrawled sharpie it reads: SA: 2 Mexico: 0.

Flash forward to the first goal scored by South Africa; the first goal of the World Cup. I am crushed in a mob of people that fill a tiny bar. On my tip-toes, I peer over the shoulders of a stranger, pushing against him so I can see the game projected against the wall. I turn my face to the ceiling, struggling to get clean air not tainted with body sweat. When South Africa scores I lose the screen, united in jumping madness. The blaring noise pounds in our ears; the sound of the entire country celebrating. I imagine the African ground below us, pounded with the feet of millions, the air carrying the vibrations of celebration.

We will tie Mexico, but the party will go into the night—filling the streets and blocking traffic. The South African rhythm will be the backdrop until dawn, blowing, humming and reminding every foreigner on this soil: it is here.

 Video From Game Two in Jozi:

The Graduation Speech That Never Was

For all of the journalism grads out there. It wasn't chosen, but this is what it would have been.

My fellow journalism grads, families, friends and everyone who has been on this journey with us, not just at Mizzou but throughout the years that have shaped who we are today.

It seems like we have just barely gotten through finals week, only to wake up this morning to a bright sun and the next chapter of our lives... I know, I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly either.

Surely it is a mixed bag of emotions. Surely we are sitting here, blinking, hardly able to believe that the last four years have gone by.

We came in, determined to be journalists, advertisers, and communicators. Now we question what these titles practically mean for the rest of our lives.

We are far from the eager-eyed and cocksure freshman who complained about taking Journalism 1010.

Now, we are not looking ahead to intimidating capstones, but rather the daunting task of taking our skills outside of the University context.

Today as we take those steps beyond the pillars that once warmly welcomed us with Tiger Stripe ice cream, there are two things as communicators, as students and as people that we must never forget.

The first is to know that we can accomplish anything.

They tell us there are no jobs.

They tell us the industry is failing.

They tell us that the future is unknown, that we must decide it.

They are waiting with baited breath.

When I hear these things, my stomach drops. Just like it did waiting for the results of a midterm I took after no sleep and six hours of coffee-induced studying.

But where does this fear come from? It comes from our imaginations.

My brother once told me that “too often great minds or gifts are wasted out of fear or excuses.” So let’s not make excuses.

Because right now there is more opportunity than ever before to shape this industry and this profession into what it should and could be: reliable, honest, informative, accurate but also meaningful.

Yes, the arrival of new media has forever changed the way we communicate, but it should never change why we communicate.

Stories and people have not changed.

We must remember to stay humble, we must remember those we serve. We must remember at the core of every story is a story about humanity and it is our duty to clearly express this—whether through twitter, blog, photos, video, flash graphics, slideshows, audio, or text.

Secondly, if we take away nothing else, no other skill from the Univeristy of Missouri School of Journalism let it be our ability to question.

Question the state of the world.

Question the societal role of journalism and advertising.

Question the barriers in the industry.

Question ourselves as we change.

We are no longer the gatekeepers of information. But there is still a role for us. It is to go deep enough into a story or message to find a truth that resonates with everyone.

We can still be the bearers of light, but remember that the wisdom is not a given. We are not wise for bearing light, but rather will be wise if we are gutsy enough and patient enough to delve deeper.

We have literally watched our dated journalism school move into the new media revolution. Now it is our turn.

Lets go out in to this world and embrace this life for what it is and for the possibilities of what it can some day be.

Please, Just Light My Way Home

I realized before I left on the two-hour drive that I had forgotten my glasses. It was dark out and the streetlights played with my eyes and danced across my windshield. Their blurry impressions of light left my mind free to fill in the details. I started wondering, as I often do when I forget my glasses, if the Impressionist painters were really just near-sighted. I know that Van Gogh had epilepsy, but what about Monet? Did he too see the world without its details? Did he too extract from this that you don’t need every fact to form the exquisite truth?

I let my eyes blur the lights instead of straining to see their sources. Out of the corner of my left eye, I followed the painted white line illuminated by my headlights just a few feet in front of me. My step-mom’s words started to echo in my head: the saying she would tell me when I got overwhelmed about the uncontrollable future, “You can drive all the way from New York to California only seeing the road in front of you.” Sometimes all you need to see is that patch of yellow-lit black pavement. Luckily, that was mostly all I could see.

I looked at the wide windshield as if it were a frame for a moving painting. Blurred McDonalds arches and white billboards I couldn’t read came in and out, barely becoming more in focus. Perhaps the Midwest highway is more beautiful this way. I could see the open sky and the glow of the full moon hanging low. I could see the reflectors on the side of the road, forming a line that made its way to a disappearing point in the distance—a point always on the horizon no matter how far I’ve driven.

This will be one of the last trips I make from Kansas City to Columbia. This is one of the last times highway I70 will lead me home. It was on this highway four years ago that I woke up sweating in the backseat of my mom’s car. I felt soaked in the August humidity and drenched in resentment. Why was I brought here? I was groggy and couldn’t remember the picture of our destination or how I should feel about it. The only images I could recollect were the tearful goodbyes compounded by my gut that ached with the pain of detachment. There had been so many goodbyes. And then the crisp night before, which I spent on the floor of my empty room in Portland. That night, Audrey slept with me on my unfolded sleeping bag where the bed used to be. The room was a different color now. The ceiling finally matched the angled walls. Fresh paint replaced its old comforting smell. My photographs, cards, and posters were gone. It was just us, my pink-striped sleeping bag from summer camp and my rolling black suitcase.

Since that night, home has been a place that is ever changing for me. But maybe that’s just the nostalgia talking. Maybe even before that, my home was never set in stone but characterized by an overnight bag that moved with me from Mom’s house to Dad’s. Or maybe home isn’t a place at all.

I just finished reading an essay one of my professors wrote called “Home is Where the Heart Aches,” and I can’t seem it get it, or its title out of my head. Home is where the heart aches. Sometimes my heart aches for Portland. It aches for the summer days that dragged on, sitting in the backyard of my friend Annie’s house listening to music, having water fights and making whipped cream from scratch. Sometimes my heart aches for New York and the month two summers ago I spent with Ben and his roommates. It aches for the scorching, miserable day when we lugged the blow-up pool (and two 25 pound weights that Ben insisted on buying) from downtown Manhattan to his house near Queens because we had to have a kiddy-pool on the roof. It aches for the summers in Baltimore when I heard crickets and saw fireflies for the first time. When I drove down the highway with my cousin Jeremy listening to Shimmer by Fuel and feeling much older than I was. It aches for the day my grandfather Poppop watched me run around the high school track near their house. “You’re real good, Em,” he told me as I circled around, shoes burning on the ground-up tires.

It aches for my vegan Thanksgiving in Kansas City. It aches for the spongy grass in Florida. It aches for the Alaskan world that I have yet to discover.

When I was a little girl I would lie awake in my bed in Portland, listening to the breeze through the old mesh windows. I would look out over my neighbor’s yard to a streetlight on the next block. Every night I would look for it. And every night it glowed yellow. Sometimes I thought of it as a star watching over me. I loved that blurred light so much as it always managed to glow through the overgrown trees night after night.

In many ways these moments of contentment will always be the home that I have in myself. Even if the places where they occurred are not my physical home. Sometimes finding home feels like aiming for that disappearing point on the highway. Sometimes I will resent it because I can only see what it isn’t, and not the elegant, beautiful, blurred painting that it is.

For now, I will continue my drive, playing games with the lights as they hit my windshield, and relishing the unique magnificence of my Missouri home.

Revival

In light of some recent happenings, I have decided to revive the blog. Perhaps readers won’t be quite as intrigued now that I am not technically Living in Contrast, but I think that in some ways I still am, in the way that everyone is.

Naturally, my goals for this blog have changed somewhat. Initially I wanted to tell stories about South Africans I was meeting and experiences that I was having. But when I look back over the last entry, I see that it is more about accomplishing an unfathomable dream.

In many ways life in Columbia has been much more challenging than life in South Africa. Even the most optimistic, hopeful, determined person can be crushed by the pressure of graduation, of reality, and of that word that I hate: future.

I feel like my life has once again become a countdown of time: three months until graduation, four months until I return to Johannesburg, six months until United Airlines will remind me to come back to Kansas City. Ten months until I am 23 and need to prove to myself that I have done something in this world, that the last year has not been a waste, and I have lived to my fullest potential.

Sometimes I get glimpses of what my parents and grandparents have been telling me for years: time goes by quicker than you think. When did I become 22? There are eight years until I am 30. Seriously. Think about that—it is equidistance from 14.  I still feel 14, okay not really… but at least 17. Not 22.

Several years ago I felt a similar perplexity at the loss of time and decided that I would do something remarkable with my life every year. At least that way I can look back on my life and say,

that was the year I ran my first marathon

that was the year I wrote a screenplay

that was the year I left everyone I knew in Portland and came to Missouri

that was the year I went to Johannesburg for five and a half months.

Some year I’ll be 81, looking back on my eightieth year that has just been a tiny fraction – a mere 1/80^th-- of my lifetime. A millisecond.

That was the year I learned to knit because damnit, I’m 80.

It doesn’t matter the level of the accomplishment, but if it is remarkable to you in some way (like my aunt who started creating sculptures out of dryer lint) then do it.

If I keep track in this way, will it make my lifetime seem more quantifiable? I’m not sure. Maybe it makes the countdown less maddening.

I talked to my brother last night, trying to get the cliff notes on how to approach graduation and the daunting task of deciding your life. He told me the simplest thing, that of course I knew along, and we all know all along, but just lose sight of: it is the journey that counts, not the destination.

I am going back to Johannesburg for the World Cup in hopes of jumpstarting an international reporting career. Will it work? I have no idea. Am I terrified? Absolutely. Yes my 22^nd year can always be “the year that I graduate,” but for me I know that my remarkable thing must be more than that. Graduation, for many of us, has become a given. Where you direct your life after that is the challenge. So let yourself be remarkable.

On Endings

This is the third time that I have tried to write a formal close to this blog. There is so much that I want to sum up, so many lessons that I have to share with anyone who graces across this page, that it is a challenge to know how to start.

When I left, Jillian and I wrote letters to each other that we didn’t read until I was sitting on the plane. Coincidentally, in both of our first paragraphs, we acknowledged how intimidating it was to write such a goodbye letter. How would we express the impact the other had made on us? How could I put in to words that none of this personal growth would have happened without her by my side?

And now, as I hope to write something similarly conclusive, I have realized several things. The first is that no matter how hard I try, there is nothing I can say in this entry that will “sum up” this experience. As I’ve learned with most things in life, the reality of it, and the impact it has made on me, will keep molding and changing—just as all things in life. I cannot conclude it any more than I could conclude the first chapter of a book—because that chapter will mean something different after I read the second, the third, the fourth, and the last. I cannot impart wisdom that will always be applicable. I can only be honest, as I have tried to do in every entry that I write.

As I look back over the entries, I do get a gut urge that screams DELETE IT, similar to how I felt when I read back over my middle school diary. I thought about writing a disclaimer to many of the entries—in part because some are so honest and so raw. It is a challenge to know that these personal thoughts are out there in the universe for people to read. Also challenging because I know that many of the thoughts I had then do not reflect how I see things now. But I guess that is the growth part, and that is the journey.

In my History of Memoir class we are reading the first memoir ever written: Confessions By Saint Augustine. My professor was examining the way that this historical text was written and made a comment that stuck with me: “He writes as he progresses and he progresses as he writes.” He is literally trying to make sense of everything on the page as he is writing, and the reader feels that struggle.

For many of these entries, and even this one, that is what I feel like I am doing: finding meaning as the words spill out. Perhaps this isn’t the way one should write because it is less cohesive. But when you’re 'in it', all you can do is tell your situation. Even if that just means events and reaction.

So I guess I will be writing this final entry for the rest of my life. I will describe this experience differently wherever I am, and that’s okay.

When I left I told Jillian that people can adapt but they can’t change. Sometimes I repeat this saying to myself, turn it around on its head and try to apply it differently.  What is the difference between adaptation and change? I truly believe that humans can adapt to nearly any situation they are put in. For the people in the squatter camps, they were used to the way that they lived, and that was just life. It wasn’t pitied because there was little opportunity for comparison. You do what you have to do: you let yourself live; sometimes you make yourself.

I adapted to my world in Johannesburg, so much so that it became life. It was not a trip, it was not a vacation; I was not a traveler nor a reporter moving through, as I had envisioned: I had a family and experiences that brought me elatedness, sadness, joyfulness, and sometimes despair.

From South Africa I will take this: I have never been to a place where there was so much enthusiasm, energy, and hope put forth in to molding the country. Yes, people are suffering, and many of the places I went to were not happy places. I sought out to find “the South African identity” and realized that it was ever changing—not black, white, Indian, coloured, poor, rich, middle class, rural, urban, suburban—but all of these things at the same time. It was and is an enigma, and I have no right to try to define it.

From living in South Africa I will take this: I have learned that I can stand on my own wherever I am, that I can see extreme situations and keep my heart and my head. I will get by no matter what I do in life, no matter where I am. Because I simply have the human drive to live, and live as the best me that I can possibly be. And to my friends who are graduating or graduated and are terrified of what lies ahead I have learned this: we will get by.

I watched Conan’s goodbye show the other night and he said something like “but I have learned, if you do good, and are kind to people, amazing things will happen.”  I have faith in the unknown that amazing things will happen in your life if you let them, welcome them, and approach them with the childlike glee that you had when you were little and easily excitable.

Try to achieve everything that you have always dreamed of simply because you can. Do not be afraid and cut yourself short. Because if you can imagine it, then the path leading you there will come.

Thank you to all of my faithful readers who stuck with me through breakdowns and revelations. I am so grateful to all of you for such wonderful comments. Sometimes I go back and read them over because I can hardly believe I’ve been so blessed with such wonderful people in my life. I love you all and there is a good chance that this isn’t goodbye.

“Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way, or make one. Try with all your might. Self made or never made.” OS Marden