Resolution

While flying from Indianapolis back to Tucson, I got the urge to finish my first collection of poems and short stories.  This is significant because I began that collection in college, and it has sat untouched (and un-thought-about) since I started law school in 2007.

Of course, wrapping it up is just a thought at this point; I haven’t actually taken any steps to complete my work.  In fact, I ask myself right now whether I’ll ever finish it even if I do break out the olde quill and parchment.  After all, what I have in mind is to write another short story or two, throw in a few more poems, and perhaps spruce up the layout some.  Oh, and find some good quotations to sprinkle in there somehow.  Maybe a couple of illustrations, just for effect.  You get the idea.  This project may never end simply because it’s the never-ending project.

But no.  I’m not going down that route.  That was the me of the twenty-oughts.  The me who could never seem to finish what he began.  The me of the new decade finishes the meaningful projects he undertakes.  Mark my words.  As God is my witness, I will finish my little opus this year.

On Growing Up

I was standing in downtown Tucson, getting ready to buy a carne asada taco, when it hit me. There I was, standing in the cold, semi-educated, with longish hair and wearing a gray wool coat and a dark blue scarf—exactly how, when I was a child, I might have pictured my grown self. If only I could go back in time and reexperience the longing I felt then to be where I am now, I might appreciate it more.

3:10 to Tucson

I hate flying.  Sure, there were the days when I loved it.  But I was a child then, living in a carefree pre-9/11, pre-financial-crisis world.  Now I look at that once-magical process of getting from Indianapolis to Tucson (or vice versa) as one huge pain in the ass.

Maybe TSA really tries to make the security process user-friendly, but they’ve failed miserably.  Instead it’s more complex than ever.  Take out your laptop.  Take out your video camera.  No gels allowed.  Empty your pockets.  Okay, some gels allowed.  Boarding pass and I.D.  No, put your I.D. away…you only need your boarding pass here.  Take off your shoes.  Maybe it’s your belt buckle.

I’ve been through the process enough times that I have all of this sorted out before approaching the checkpoint.  But I (usually) can’t blame the people who don’t.  After all, if you don’t fly often, it’s not really that clear just what you’re supposed to do.  Yes, there are signs, but the people who stop to try to read and follow them cause more of a backup than those who proceed by instinct and wait for a TSA agent to tell them what to do.

Then there’s the flight itself.  Remember when flight attendants seemed like they liked their jobs?  That was clearly before their airlines started to charge for checked luggage, encouraging all passengers to try to fit all of their belongings into the overhead bins.  Before airlines started charging for snacks and stopped accepting cash.  These days, flight attendants seem more like elementary teachers on the brink of retirement.  (It’s not surprising, then, that the seats seem to be the ideal fit for schoolchildren.)  Sit down, do as you’re told, don’t bother me, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a thimble of juice to wash down the hour’s worth of indignities you suffered trying to get on the damned plane.

All right—reality check.  Yes, I understand that these processes are in place to make flying safer and cheaper.  I get that these are people who are performing jobs that alternate between mindnumbing routine and messy confrontation.  I don’t blame them for the inconvenience of flying.  Really.  In fact I don’t blame anyone but the occasional would-be terrorist who makes things harder on the rest of us.  Furthermore, I grudgingly admit that if unbundling the cost of operating flights means I can save money on my ticket, I’m willing to accept that.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

New Beginning

Just had a great conversation with an old friend from high school.  We actually talked about what we’ve been doing since high school, which is unusual for this type of reunion—usually the people involved make attempts to talk about what they’ve done since high school, but it eventually devolves into reminiscences of those old high school glory days.

One of the things we talked about was our common interest in strangers’ blogs.  Not even blogs keyed to provide useful information, necessarily, but rather strangers’ blogs about their lives.  Just blogs about what people do on a day-to-day basis.  At that point, I recalled my own neglected blog, and I decided that I too could potentially attract some fans.

So here I am, at the start of a new year, with the resolve to at least give it a try.  I doubt I’m funny or witty enough to attract a significant following, but what the hell?  Might as well try.  So as we enter the new decade, I’m going to share with you the world as I see it.

On y va!

Facebook

I woke up one morning about a year ago with a funny question in my head: Is Facebook evil?  After some introspection I decided that the answer to this question was no—but I did end up taking a break from Facebook for a few months.  But as the true purpose of Facebook—i.e., gathering user information to enhance targeted and contextual advertising—becomes more and more manifest, I find that same question on my mind more and more.

Sure, Facebook has its share of advantages.  I use it to stay in contact with friends in places I used to live.  It’s a simple way to keep up with family in other parts of the country.  I even have a friend from Nigeria who, thanks to Facebook, found several members of her family that had been assumed dead for fifteen years.  But as great as these things are, it’s a little uncomfortable to know that the information we’re sharing with one another we are also sharing with whoever cares to pay for it.  And Facebook continues to move down the road to sharing more and more information.

Plus, many of the ways we use Facebook may not be particularly healthy.  There’s a seemingly constant need to be on Facebook to keep abreast of friends’ postings and status messages.  But is it really worth it?  My experience has been that the ratio of postings that are actually interesting to those that are just mundane details of acquaintances’ lives heavily weighs on the mundane side.  There’s even evidence that social networking sites propagate class and racial division.

At the end of the day, I’m still not sold on the idea that Facebook is evil.  However, the privacy issue does concern me.  In a world where personal information is becoming a very valuable commodity, protecting that information is just good sense.  I won’t be leaving Facebook, but you can bet that I’ll be more vigilant about what I post in the future.

Africa – Greetings from Niamey

I’m sitting in a small cybercafé in Niamey, just off the Rond-Point du Grand Hôtel.  I have a few minutes of time, so here’s a little summary of my trip so far in no particular order:

I arrived at the Niamey airport at about 2:00 Thursday morning.  It has to be the sketchiest airport in the world.  I rode into town with a missionary whose brother I met on the plane, and she dropped me off at the Grand Hôtel du Niger.  It was expensive, but a good place to get some rest and prepare for the upcoming days.

I slept late, then checked out of the hotel.  I checked into a small hostel called “Chez Tatayi” that is a pretty nice place at a good price.  It’s clean and it’s comfortable.  For 12 dollars a night I get a bed and a locker for my stuff—essentially an identical arrangement to any hostel I stayed at in Europe.  Plus it has a peaceful courtyard where I can excape the chaotic and noisy streets.

Friday I went with a guide into the bush about an hour north of Niamey to see the giraffes.  We saw about 13 of them; I guess the entire herd is about 170.  It was truly amazing to see them in the wild.  I’ve seen them in zoos before, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting.  It’s really captivating how they walk and run so gracefully and carefully…as if the ground were going to break and fall out from under them.

Tomorrow I’m going to go out on the river with the same guide.  We’ll go up the river to see the hippos north of here.  It’ll be about a 4-hour tour, and it should be amazing.

The food is delicious!  I can’t begin to describe it, so I won’t try.  But it’s truly great eating.

Because of the delay in processing my visa application for Benin, my travel companion Sarah is going to come to Niamey, and we may reverse our route, going through Burkina Faso down into Ghana.  We’ll discuss that when she gets here tonight.

Apart from that, no real news.  The people here are dirt poor but very welcoming.  My skin color is associated with money, of course, but that doesn’t seem to make as much difference as I thought it would.  People are happy to help you out by giving directions or even taking you to your destination without asking for anything in return.

My French has been extremely useful here.  I figured it would be helpful if I got in trouble with the law or if I had to go to the hospital, but nearly everyone I’ve met here so far speaks French.  That makes things pretty easy.

(Addition:)

Sarah arrived yesterday.  We went together up the Niger River to see the hippos.  The pirogue was a little scary at first because we had to have not only a guide to paddle, but also a guide to bail out the water that came into the boat thru the many little holes in the bottom.  But it still floated fine, and we spent a couple of hours on the water.  We saw the hippos at the end of the trip; there were two, and the guide said that they weighed several tons.  Imagine!

Sarah and I are leaving for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso tomorrow morning at around 5:30.  We’ll get there sometime tomorrow night.

Africa: Niamey

I’m in Niamey. Things are going well, but I’ll be here a couple more days becquse my passport is at the Beninese Consulate and I won’t be able to pick it up until Monday. Sarah is coming up here from Benin to meet me because of the delay, and we might just scrap Benin altogether and go thru Burkina Faso to Northern Ghana. We’ll make those plans tomorrow.

I’ve see lots of things here so far, most notably the giraffes north of Niamey. Truly magnificent. The people here have been very welcoming, and I haven’t had any problems beyond delays in travel and so forth.

I’m writing this on a French keyboard in an internet café, and I’m about outof time. Love to my family, and I’ll try to keep you posted as I move along.

Africa – New York Times on Niger

I leave Tucson today. This morning The New York Times online posted an article about Niger in its feature spot.  Scary, but that’s taking place in the north.  I’ll be in the south, in and around the capital, and only for a day or two before I go to Benin.

Africa – Pre-departure Notes

I leave for Africa Tuesday, December 16.  This entry is a brief description and basic itinerary of my trip.  For your convenience, I’ve included links to Wikipedia articles and other postings about some of the locations I’ll visit.  Read what interests you—ignore what doesn’t.

Here’s how it’ll go.  I leave Phoenix at 6 a.m. on the 16th, and after changing planes in New York and Casablanca, I’ll arrive in Niamey, Niger, in the early-morning hours of the 18th.  I’ll probably be there a day or two, but I’ll leave shortly for Cotonou, Benin, which, according to Lonely Planet, is a 14-hour trip by bus.  Once in Cotonou, I’ll meet my research partner and travel companion, Sarah, and we’ll spend a couple of days making our way west along the coast.  We’ll stop in Lomé, Togo, and Accra, Ghana, and probably other places as well.

Click on picture for a larger image.

While we’re in Accra, we may meet with one or more of the justices on the Ghanaian Supreme Court.  A group of them was in Tucson earlier this year to speak at the law school, and it seems that this would be a good opportunity for the law school to “outreach” and follow up with them.  Sarah and I will be in Accra around Christmastime, tho, so it may not really be feasible.  We’re still working on this.

A burgeoning circumstance merits an additional word about our stay in Accra.  Wednesday, December 10, the Ghanaian voting commission announced the results of Ghana’s presidential election:  inconclusive.  That is, no candidate got a majority of the votes, so there is going to be a runoff election between the top two candidates on Dec. 28.  We don’t anticipate any trouble, as Ghana is a relatively stable and peaceful place.  NPR ran a story on Tuesday haling Ghana as a model of democracy, with voter turnout as high as 90% on election day, compared to some some 61% in the United States.  Ballots are counted in the public eye, and, most importantly for my consideration, the process is typically peaceful.  Still, it’s good to be cognizant of the election, and Sarah and I will definitely be alert for fishy situations.  By the 28th, we plan to have left the capital, and our stay will be registered with the American Embassy in Ghana.

Once we leave Accra, we’ll head north to the parks in the Black Volta region along the border with Burkina Faso.  Our mission:  to interview NGOs and native Ghanaians about the effects of the creation of national parks and forest reserves on the indigenous peoples there.  We hope that our brief research trip will be of some use to the academic community, but we’re not holding our breath.  No matter—whether the world learns anything from our trip or not, I’m confident that we’ll learn plenty.

Once finished in Ghana, we’ll move north into Burkina Faso.  We’ll probably spend a day or two as tourists in Ouagadougou, the capital, then Sarah and I will part ways, and I’ll head back to Niamey.  I’ll return to the United States on January 9.

Because telephone calls to the United States will be unreasonably expensive, and because Internet cafés can be found in any major city, I anticipate that all of my communication home will be thru some Internet medium:  by blog, e-mail, Facebook, etc.  Please feel free to visit this blog again, as I will try to post an entry or two while I’m actually in Africa, and I will definitely post an entry (with pictures!) when I get back to the States.

Rose Canyon

I just got bak from my first camping trip since my November trip to Desemboque.  I went with my coworker and fellow law student Sarah to Rose Canyon in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson.  We had intended for there to be several people going, but as the clouds built up over the Catalinas, our would-be companions grew faint of heart.  In the end, just the two of us went.

Despite the imminent rain, the campground was nearly full.  We had to fight the weather for a long time before we could get a fire started, and even then we couldn’t really get a good blaze going.  But the coals were all we needed to cook our food and stay warm, so our small fire sufficed.  In the night the rain came down pretty hard and managed to insinuate itself into the tent, so I was startled awake in the middle of the night to find my feet soaking wet from the small puddle of water that had accumulated.  Morning found my feet dry, however, and after having a hearty breakfast at the Iron Door, a restaurant near the top of Mt. Lemmon, Sarah and I hiked out to Rose Canyon Lake.  While it had been hazy and wet all morning, by this time the clouds were clearing up, and the sun had shown its face at last.

The high altitude and the moderate temperature made the trip a pleasant contrast to the hot days in the city.  The clouds and rain and pines reminded me of nothing so much as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where I went to college.  While I usually like to take lots of photos when I make a trip like this, this time I decided to try to experience my surroundings without worrying about capturing them on film.  It created a subtle difference in the way I appreciated the outing, and, while I think I will take photos on my next excursion, it was refreshing to abstain this time.