Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops

I have a policy. It’s called the No Drama in Lesotho policy, or NDL policy. It mostly applies to dating and hooking up in a small town and the drama that often accompanies such behavior. After all, we basically live and hang out with a community of about 50 people who all know each other and each other’s bidness. But lately, I’m discovering that I need to concentrate more on applying the policy to cars. Brief weekend recap:

Oct 30-Nov1: Went to Jozi with friends who were running the Soweto 10K and marathon. (No, of course, I didn’t run. Don’t you know me?) Had drinks with an Angolan and his Mozambican wife. Our group had two cars broken into, another car stolen, and wallets, ipods and money taken too. And I want you to know that because I don’t run and was sleeping when all crime occurred, I was completely unaffected. Except for feeling deep sympathy for my friends. Then rode back to Lesotho with a French woman, an Englishman, a Maltese,  and a Kiwi. Also, learned that a friend was nearly carjacked in downtown Maseru.

Nov 6-8: Baked 3 dozen bagels, 2 dozen peanut butter cookies, and 4 dozen chocolate Amarula truffles. Sold them all at a benefit bake sale to raise money for a home in Kenya for orphaned street girls and raised over $900. Clearly, we need a high-quality bakery in Maseru. Okay, no car drama here but it seemed silly to leave out a weekend.

Nov 13-15: Drove 1.5 hours to Ficksburg, South Africa, for a jazz festival. It was advertised to start at 12pm, we showed up at 3pm, and the music finally started at 5pm. Around 7pm, we heard that the parking area was getting full and that people normally stay at this festival until about 7am the next morning. Sure enough, our cars were almost blocked in, so we strategically moved them to prevent a full blockage. Three hours later, we discovered that the crazy Basotho drivers foiled us still. We had to convince a drunk man in a Jeep Cherokee to move out of the way so we could squeeze our cars thru the narrowest space possible. Then one of the cars broke down in the middle of the parking area’s dirt road, so we had to push the car out of the way using 45-point turn (push it forward, push it backwards, repeat, repeat again, and again). All while two South African policemen watched us from their truck. Two hours later, we abandoned the broken car and drove back to Maseru.

But next weekend!?! Next weekend, I will be visited by my old college roommate and two weekends from now, we’ll be in the lovely, beautiful and stylish Cape Town. What drama could possibly befall us there??

 

Let Me Entertain You

Reasons Why Life in Maseru Can Be So Entertaining:

1. We have a dive bar that’s been dubbed “Club Awesome.” It’s the kind of place where you don’t wear open toed shoes and girls are often groped by strange men (a few stern words and an evil look is more than enough to make them stop). But they play great hip hop music from back in the day, sprinkle in a few modern hits, and there’s a braai (bbq grill) that’s always on fire outside to keep people warm.

2. You can be 3 hours late and still be 2 hours early. Okay, this happened just over the border in SA (but close enough): We went to a jazz festival that was supposed to start at 12pm. We showed up at 3pm and the music didn’t actually start until 5pm.

3. Every once in awhile, the frozen food section at the grocery store is just empty. And while food shopping, I regularly exclaim things like “Oh! They have asparagus today!” It’s a good reminder that food doesn’t magically grow in the aisles.

4. Nothing in town is ever more than a 15 minute drive. Really. If I experience any reverse culture shock upon returning to the States, it will likely happen when it takes me more than 15 minutes to get anywhere. And you all thought I was chronically late before …

5. A wave and a smile generally gets you through the border between SA and Lesotho, even if you don’t bother waiting in line at immigration to get your passport stamped. Not that I would do such a thing, of course …

6. The local newspapers print headlines like these:

 

Get Offa My Cloud

For those who have met me in person and met my father, it is clear that I am my father’s daughter. We have the same talkative nature, the same take charge attitude (although he’s probably wrong less frequently than me), and even some of the same mannerisms. He’s my best mentor for business, for faith, for life in general. So he’s pretty great. I aspire to be more like him in many ways and one of the things I’ve always appreciated about our relationship is that I’ve never felt the need to get out of my dad’s shadow.

Which is probably a good thing because today, I received an email from a headhunter who found me on LinkedIn. But he wasn’t trying to reach me … he was trying to reach my father:

Subject Line: If you’re Rich’s daughter

I’d appreciate it if you either send me his current contact info or tell him I’d like to reconnect with him. Last time I talked to him he was at The Company, but I don’t have his current email or phones. Also tell Rich Peter [surname redacted] would like to find him.

Thanks for the help,

Tim

Funny how an innocent and well-intentioned note can make one feel so used and yet invisible at the same time!

 

Spirits are Using Me, Larger Voices Calling

One of my favorite high school memories is singing Crosby Stills and Nash’s Southern Cross in show choir — the wonderful Mrs. Brickman was at the helm, we’d all be wearing our Studio Singers tuxedos and red bowties (hey, don’t smirk!), and hearing our talented group harmonize over lyrics like “Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small/But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a comin’ day” was enough to make me want to cry.

Now that I live in the southern hemisphere, the actual Southern Cross constellation is a regular feature in my night sky. And I love it. This grouping of four major stars somehow connects with me on an emotional and almost spiritual level — I love finding it and feeling the ensuing wave of nostalgia, gratitude and appreciation for those singing and performing days. Today, I happened to stumble across a stargazing blog whose pictures of Crux made me gasp and nearly overwhelmed me with its beauty. Just check out how stunning this constellation is, up close and personal. This world is an amazing and breathtaking creation, no?

 

 

 

 

 

 

More at NGC4755 The Jewel Box in the Southern Cross « My Dark Sky.

 

You Are Beautiful in Every Single Way

This post is dedicated to all the amazing people who have so far fundraised, donated, or otherwise supported One Home Many Hopes and our Breaking Ground campaign.

So, okay, I admit, I was a bit pissy in my last post about the campaign. What can I say? There have definitely been tough moments.

But then there are these amazing moments — like when you realize that there are people scattered around the world who are working so hard for these 32 little girls who they’ve never met. We started out this campaign with 6 people in three cities and two countries, an idea, a conference call phone number, and the need to raise $70,000. Now, we have 184 people raising money to raise a new roof and 567 people who have donated. And that doesn’t even count all the people who attended and donated OHMH events in London, Boston, New York, San Francisco and other places around the world.

And wow — how these people have rallied their networks! There are crew leaders who have recruited other team members and together have raised nearly $4,000 in two weeks. I have a Google alert set up for “One Home Many Hopes” and people I’ve never contacted nor even heard of are blogging about OHMH, the girls, and how excited they are to be a part of this effort. Thanks to the passion and dedication of these people — these strangers to me and to the girls! — we are just over halfway through the campaign and raised just over half of what’s needed.

We’re still not done! Even here in Lesotho, people are getting involved — a Maseru bake sale is being organized for this Sunday, 2-4pm. Come on out and buy some of the best baked goods that you’ll find in this town – no exaggeration. Lemon bars, pineapple upside down cake, New York style bagels, chocolate chip cookies, banoffee tarts, sugar cookies, amarula chocolate truffles, banana nut bread — and that’s only a partial list of what will be available. This is no grade school bake sale, folks; you won’t want to miss it!

So, another hearty thank you to all the One Home Many Hopes supporters out there. What you’re doing matters. Not just in the big scheme of life, but in the individual lives of 32 grateful girls.

 

Red and Yellow, Black and White

I am an ENFP.

And as much as I love Myers-Briggs types and other such personality analysis frameworks, I don’t normally use them as my lens through which to see the world and make sense of it. This morning, though, I experienced one of those moments when the abstract becomes tangible.

My co-worker had a run-in with the security guard company last night. Evidently, the alarm keypad in her house keeps sticking so she can’t properly disarm the alarm. And when your alarm goes off, the security company sends over a guard to check and make sure everything is ok. The poor girl has repeatedly set off the alarm due to the faulty keypad and has told the security company repeatedly to fix the keypad. Naturally, they haven’t yet.

Last night, she tripped the alarm and the security company sent over a guy, who very rudely inquired of my co-worker, “Why do you keep failing?” That question alone would have been enough to set me off. But it gets worse. After she explained that she’s repeatedly requested a repair on her keypad, this security guard shoved open her front door, pushed past her, and entered her house.

I repeat: I am an ENFP. As soon as I heard her story up to that point, I immediately reacted with shock and horror, proclaimed that he had no right to enter her house without permission, that this was a safety violation and that it should be reported. My co-worker, an INFP, looked a little skeptical and a little doubtful. So I picked up the phone, called our office administrator who deals with the security company for the office and for our homes, and had her come over to listen to the story. She said she’d talk to the security company.

After all this, the INFP tells me that our third co-worker, an ESTJ, had reacted entirely differently. The ESTJ suggested that maybe there was a cultural difference to account for the guard’s behavior, and disclaimed that she wasn’t there to really see how the events played out, so she couldn’t really say whether the INFP should report what happened.

Whoa. I mean, we were like textbook Myers-Briggs archetypes. And it made me realize how important it really is to have different people with their different personalities, thought processes, and reactions. Depending on the situation, you may want someone like me who goes with the gut intuition and makes a decisive move. Or you may want the ESTJ who wants to get the facts before leaping ahead. Or the INFP who wants to do right by everyone and keep the peace. Granted, having these personalities in one group might also mean a whole lot of conflict.

Thankfully, the three of us manage to work hard in our small, shared office, laugh a lot, commiserate and sympathize with each other, bounce ideas off each other and just all around work really well together. And we hang out socially, whether eating out at the Indian restaurant (cuz there’s only one in Maseru), or making tacos and watching a Glee marathon. They keep me sane, this INFP and ESTJ, and I’m glad for it!

Wanna know your Myers-Briggs type? Go here and answer the 72 yes/no questions. It’ll only take 2 minutes. Then, drop me a note/comment and let me know your type!

 

And the Whole World has to Answer Right Now

Just because I volunteer for orphaned girls in Kenya , it doesn’t make me a good person.

I mean that.

One of the most frustrating things I’ve experienced since I began co-leading a fundraising campaign a few months ago is when people are reluctant to get involved because they don’t want to appear to be saying “lookie lookie, I’m a good person!”

It’s an understandable feeling, don’t get me wrong.

But I’m gonna vent for a bit — volunteering or fundraising doesn’t make you a good person. It’s a good thing to do but it doesn’t make you a good person. In fact, you can fundraise and kinda be a jerk about it. One of our fundraisers in New York is using the tagline “Give some money. Don’t be a dick.”

And I like that.

I like it because it doesn’t try to make you gooey with sympathy. It just calls you out — no matter how bad things are in the US economy, you can still spare $20. Give up one night’s dinner out. And if you can spare it, so can many of the people you know. They just have to be asked.

Co-leading this campaign from Lesotho has really sucked sometimes. People are difficult. Collaboration takes patience. A six-hour time difference between me and the most of the team has meant long nights and conference calls in the wee hours of the morning. And I hate it sometimes. So there, I feel like saying that already makes me a not-good person. Who can hate raising money for 32 orphaned girls who desperately need a new home? Me. That’s who. I do love these girls crazy madly deeply, but I’m not doing this campaign just because of that. It’s just something that needs to get done. And I”ll probably never want to lead a campaign again. That doesn’t make me a good person (although it does make me appreciate the people who fundraise for a living).

Neither are you a holier-than-thou, do-gooder by asking for a few bucks from people who can spare them. So, hey, the next time a friend or a colleague asks you to join a fundraising team, just give it a shot — especially if the cause is something you connect with. All you have to do is send a few emails to everyone you know. And don’t gush.

Okay. Glad to have that off my chest.

And now, here’s your invitation — Give some money or Join my Team. Don’t be a dick.

 

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Not sure that this letter would apply to young people who are not liberal/progressive but it’s an entertaining and somewhat thought-provoking piece:

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Every day, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world—and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy “business.” We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned “politics” into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy—everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people—not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value—built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

Full story at: The GOOD 100: Umair Haque | GOOD.

 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find Out What it Means to Me

Perhaps information like this will finally prove to big companies that they need to work harder to find women to hire into the C-suite? I hope so, but I won’t hold my breath. And, ladies, please don’t fall for the age-old fallacy that you have to act like a man to succeed in a man’s world. I have a hard time believing that Dell didn’t put a single woman on its marketing team for “Della.” Yet, the sentence cited in the article below still made it to the site. Interesting.

The largest growing economic force in the world isn’t China or India — it’s women.

The earning power of women globally is expected to reach $18 trillion by 2014 — a $5 trillion rise for current income, according to World Bank estimates. That is more than twice the estimated 2014 GDP of China and India combined.

For companies, the growing economic power of women would seem an obvious market to capture. But according to a global study by the Boston Consulting Group, women feel at best underserved by companies, and at worst ignored.

“The current way companies appeal to women is to take a male product and paint it pink,” said Michael Silverstein, a partner at BCG and coauthor of “Women Want More,” a book based on the study results.

He points to Dell Computers ill-fated “Della” Web site launched in May. Aimed at generating more interest with female consumers, “Della” was dropped after a backlash of criticism that the site was patronizing (example from an article on the site: “You’ll find netbooks can do a lot more than check your e-mail.”)

Women: Saviors of the world economy? – CNN.com.

 

Short Skirt and a Long Jacket

Ever since I arrived in Lesotho, I’ve been approached weekly by women who voice their high opinion of my clothing and accessories with demands like, “You must give your handbag.” No introduction, no direct compliment;  just the demand. I have yet to figure out the most appropriate response. Usually, I say something like, “Oh, you like my handbag?” or I try to joke with “Should I give you my pants right now-now?” or, more often, I return with a plain “thank you.” I mean, how exactly does one respond to an imperative statement like that?

Part of the problem is that I’m not even sure what these women actually mean. Is this a way of paying a compliment? Or, do they truly expect or want me to hand over the identified item? Is there some expectation that, as an expat, I am supposed to leave behind my stuff? I hear this demand on a weekly basis and every time, I am taken aback by the brazenness of the encounter.

So, since I’m at a loss for what to say, I’m taking suggestions for witty and biting comebacks. Anyone?