ultimate peace

I am sweating. I have been and will be covered in sweat since and until I leave Israel. It’s hot and humid. Air conditioning is strange, mostly when walking in and out of rooms.

Arrived Israel Monday morning pre 5 am. We waited for co-coach Asif Muhammed to get through security. Israel is not shy about racial profiling. Then group train ride up the coast to Acco, where we’re hosting ultimate camp for Israeli, Arab-Israeli, and Palestinian kids. The kids arrive tomorrow morning.

The last three days have been staff meetings and preparations for camp. Meeting local coaches from the communities that will be coming, talking about our plans, talking about ultimate, breakout sessions, more meetings. Mass food here is better than in Prague, and there is hummus at every meal.

Yesterday I finally had enough free time to play some badminton and some basketball, and to remember we are here to play, to teach, and to teach play. It has been mostly work. Today we went to the pool, same thing with a little break from the norm. I’m reading an escapist spy story, which helps…

The team of coaches is amazing, and our leaders are tireless. All our best laid plans will be thrown into chaos tomorrow when 140 kids show up. But our ratio is good, and for a team of about 12 boys I will have 3 co-coaches. The plan: drink more water. It has been going so nonstop there has not been much time to process, and I don’t imagine time to spend writing blog posts after tonight until the kids are gone which will be days.

For now, sleep is needed to conquer the tickle in my throat.  Missing Seattle.  Missing lazy free time.  Once the kids get here, energy will come from somewhere.

love to all

Prague Blahgue

Last time I posted to this blog was in April 2009, in Israel.  Well, it’s July 2010, and I’m in Israel again.  But this post is about Prague.

I flew to Prague with some other Seattle folk via Paris.  In Paris, I had a croissant and cafe au lait, just because.  Arrival Prague, got myself to the hostel.  Met up with teammates, walked for a long time in the heat up a big hill in flip flops.  Gorgeous city.  All the buildings’ facades are intricate and colorful and beautiful.  Seeing the city from above is great, as cathedrals point up and the river winds under bridges, and one can imagine life here through the ages.

Next day we, my ultimate team Seattle Sockeye, moved into the dorms we’d be staying at, aka the barracks.  Communist era prison type dorms.  But all in all, just fine and dandy.  World Cup games are on at normal times on this side of the Atlantic.  The beer in prague is good and cheap.  Crowns = Kroners = Money.  About 20 to the dollar.

I was in Prague to play in the World Ultimate Frisbee Championships.  We played ultimate everyday for 7 days.  It was hot, and beautiful.  One night there was horrendous rain and lightning and thunder, and at one point the lightning and thunder were not so separate and the thunder was also electric.  Exciting.  Probably the team Chain Lightning (ranked #1 after winning last year’s Nationals) got excited, but then at the end of the tournament they were sad.

We lost a game on day 3 to Revolver from the Bay Area, a team that has had our number for the last year or so.  The game got called due to lightning at 13-10.  Long days, a lot of just dorms->food->fields->repeat.  We won all our other pool play games, so kept our #5 seed and were set to play our quarterfinals game as an evening showcase against Boston’s Ironside in one of the stadiums.  All I knew of Boston was that we were going to be pretty evenly matched.  There was a nice crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people, and the game did not disappoint.  They put a clever zone on us early and caused a couple mistakes, but we figured it out and improved on offense.  Late in the game our defense picked up, and we ended up winning 17-15.  This made us the #4 seed, set to play semis against Chain Lightning, who was the strongest team at Nationals last year, and only got stronger on paper since then.

The 8:30a semis game was a good one.  A lot of back and forth, with our defense making some nice adjustments to their offense.  Because of time, we were capped and the game was to 16, this when we were down 15-13, receiving.  We scored on offense, and got two breaks in a row to win on double game point 16-15.  We were ecstatic.  They were pissed.  This meant we’d be in finals, and were guaranteed at least 2nd place.  Turns out Chain lost to Japan’s Buzz Bullets and didn’t get a medal.

The tournament party was that night at a gorgeous park on a peninsula in Prague’s river.  Wonderful.  Our team got decked out in “Bro” gear, with our pink polo shirts spray painted with an “Abercrombie & Fish” logo.  Pretty excellent.  Unfortunately we were not able to “go big” that night because we had to play the next day.  Ah well.

The finals were the next day at 2:30p, in the heat of the day.  This was day 7 of playing.  It was hot.  We were matched up again against Revolver.  We very much won the pre-game, singing and chanting and rapping and smiling in the “tunnel” before they announced our names.  They were non plused.  Unfortunately the game was theirs though.  We were fatigued, and hadn’t really re-established our goals after exceeding our original goals of just getting into the finals.  Personally, I played a terrible game, which sucked, and we lost by several.  Silver medal to go along with the silver from 2008 worlds.  This one felt a helluva lot better than the last though, when we wanted and expected to win.

The icing on the cake was that we won the Spirit Award, meaning out of 40-something mens teams from around the world, we received the highest cummalitive rating from our opponents over the course of the tournament.  On one hand this was surprising, as it is rare for a finalist to also win spirit.  On the other hand, it makes sense, because our team is so fun, and we exhibit joy on the field.

We “went big” that night at a 5-story dance club downtown.  Hopefully the pictures stay private…

The next day I wandered Prague with friends, and went to the airport, watched the world cup finals, and got on a plane to Israel.  One crazy adventure to the next.

This is far and away the longest I’ve sat at a computer since June.  I’m going to go play badminton now.

naza-lamb?

I cannot possibly describe how delicious dinner was this afternoon.  I could try, and I’d use words like “holy shit you don’t even know,” and “oh my god,” “most amazing,” and maybe “it was fucked up.”  And still, after my eyes lit up and I talked for 10 minutes straight about it, you wouldn’t know.  It was SO DELICIOUS.  There was no menu, they just said “you want salad?”  The answer was yes, and what came was like 10 plates with hummus, salads, tahina, this crazy garlic/yogurt/cheese yumminess, and more.  Then it was “you want something from the grill” and the answer for those lucky few of us was “yup.”  Lamb was their specialty, and that’s where the madness really started.  The salads and dips were good, but the lamb was Cloud 9 Dank Shit.  Kebobs, meatballs and roasted varieties, each taking each other to the next level.

Okay I’m done – you get the idea.  This was in Nazareth, a predominantly arab town, at a restaurant called Diana.  If you’re near, go.  Dave Morgenroth had had this recommended on the plane a year before.  Mission accomplished.

This morning we were hiking in Yehudia National Park, where the wildflowers were all abloom with beauty, and despite the throngs of people, the pools and waterfall were magical.

Yesterday we went hiking up in the hills, less crowded, great views, good word games between us.  Then we went to Akko on the coast, one of only a few “mixed” towns in Israel.  Arabs mostly in the old town, jews around other parts…we ate a pretty good meal just after watching the sunset, had yummy desert and shared a hookah (flavored tobacco not pay-for-sex kind).  T’was nice.

The day before yesterday (last yesterday in Sudan-speak) we started the day on the Kibbutz, where I ate 4 amazing meals in lazy succession, at my friend Hannah’s family’s place where we joined their Passover seder.  It was awesome, delicious, comfortable, beautiful.  Life is good.

Tomorrow I will check out the market in Jaffa (pretty much within Tel Aviv but its own town officially) after brunch, and kick it for one more day before heading off to NYC Monday morning.  The trip has been amazing thus far, and I think we’re about to head off to a party, if not to actually hang with a bunch of Israelis, at least to pick up our bags from Toby, who had to flee our company in the North to pick up her cat.

Seriously, the lamb was so fucking good…

continuing

The week of Ultimate Peace stuff (www.ultimatepeace.org) was CRAZY, and it was one minute to the next all day every day, then out at night with the crew, which is a great group of folks, and an average of about 4 hours of sleep per night.  The coaching was good, first day with Israelis, then the big day with both Israelis and Palestinians.  It went well, but there needed to be more translators, because the fact that the kids didn’t speak the same language (one hebrew, one arabic) was frustrating for the kids, let alone for me trying to wrangle them and teach them ultimate.  Thankfully my co-coach spoke both hebrew and arabic, and fun was had.  It was a long day, and there ought to be much reflection and feedback so that the next iteration of this can go more smoothly and hopefully have something like a positive lasting impact.

The next two days were a hat tournament (teams split up at “random”), which was great fun despite the lack of rest.  My team won, which was fun, and the weather was awesome, and has been this whole time.

After the tournament, we spent a day going out to the Palestinian kids’ towns to follow up, coach more, hang out.  I went with a group to Jericho, and en route me and Dave Morgenroth sang our own version of Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, which was awesome.  Working with the kids in their home town was great.  They were kind of all over the place, and really wanted to run off with the frisbees, but the coaches there helped a bit, and our group actually was playing something very much like ultimate.  It was super fun playing with kids who were into it.  One kid was clearly a soccer player and would take a “dive” any time another kid even came close to fouling him.  Considering you call your own fouls in ultimate, this was hilarious.

That was Sunday.  Monday we took our rental cars to Jerusalem, and I got to drive which was fun because everyone drives aggressively here, which I dig.  Got into Jerusalem, dropped stuff at our little hotel, and headed out for a brief tour of the Church of the Holy Spectrum or something like that, saw the old town which is tourist shops now, and had a good explanatory view of some of the important things.  Then we went to the Wailing Wall which was kind of a trip.  An old rabbi looking guy put t’fillin on me (the black leather wrapping stuff with scrolls of prayers in it that I’d worn twice before – once for practice before my bar mitzvah, once at my bar mitzvah).  He suggested I pray for the people I love and ask G-d to let me live to my potential, etc.  I went to the wall a second time armed with religion, and it made the experience a whole lot more meaningful.  To the point even that I cried, more than I have in a looong time, at the Wailing Wall.  Isn’t that something.  Then as the guy was removing the T’fillin from me we got to talking, and basically he’s a radical Zionist who wouldn’t really hear anything about how education might actually change the behavior of Arabs – this after he quoted me statistics on how Jews are better because of education.  Back-ass-wards.  Ah well.

We ate a good dinner that night as a group, then the next day, which was yesterday, we set off in the morning for Masada.  Masada is an old castle/palace built a couple thousand years ago, where at one point a bunch of sieged Jews killed themselves rather than be taken as slaves to the Romans.  I’ve never been one to be soo interested in ruins, but it had a great view and I liked all the little models that showed what things used to look like.  The highlight was probably running up the damn thing with Moses, Loriana and Dave Barkan.  That was a good workout.  After wandering around Masada for a while, we walked down, then headed to the dead sea.

The Dead Sea is crazy!  First of all, the mud there is supposed to be super healing, so we (at this point a group of 12 maybe) caked each other in it, and had some good slippery mud time.  Then we got in the sea, which if you had some flippers or something, you could probably walk on yourself.  It is in fact super floaty.  And goddamn salty, as I had to be led to the fresh water spout to rinse out my eyes twice.  Much fun playing there.

Then we got in to Jerusalem in the evening, and as my posse was convening for dinner, I cut loose and got a ride from a friend of a friend to the bus station, came back to Tel Aviv to stay at a friend’s here that I met during the Ultimate Peace thang, and today we’re heading to some of her family’s place on a kibbutz up North for Pesach (Passover), and then possibly to somebody’s house near the beach that is currently unoccupied.  Sometimes things fall into place.

The last 8-10 days have seemed like a month.  It continues now, more like a vacation than ever having cut loose from the group.  The people are amazing, but group traveling can be a pain.

Okay, gotta pack a bag for the excursion Northward.  I guess there’s some sort of Sun Festival in Sfvat, which I’ve heard is beautiful.

We out!

po po

Had a run in with the Tel Aviv police this evening.  On the way back from a long dinner/meeting after a super long day of coaching and playing, we had six in the car, with our super goofy video guy in hte hatchback trunk.  Well, a cop pulled up behind us, with his lights flashing, which doesn’t actually mean pull over until they call out on the loudspeaker, which after a couple blocks they did.  Becca, who speaks Hebrew and English fluently feigned ignorance of Hebrew, which seemed smart, but we had to pull over and he made us all get out of the car.  No ticket which was nice.  There were two women just sitting in the cop car, not sure what that was about.  Since I was the only one not staying in the same building as everyone else, I took a cab.  For some reason I really don’t like taking taxis, though I do love taxi drivers.  Fine fine, got back to my homestay where the lady here was hanging with a couple friends, and though the chocolate cake was a little burnt on top, it’s delicious.  I’m going to go get some milk now and finish it off before showering and bed.  Tomorrow we get teh Peres Center kids (Israeli and Palestinian mixed), along with 3-4 TV news crews and other media craziness.  Ultimate Peace baby.

Holy Land Batman!

Touchdown! I’m in Tel Aviv, in a friend of a friend-i-just-met and her husband’s humble apartment.  That was a long ass way to travel.  I slept a lot on the plane, and from NY to Tel Aviv was sitting next to two brothers who were heading back to Israel for the memorial service for their father, who died suddenly a month ago.  Not happy times.  I refrained from telling them that the surprise party we threw for my dad’s 70th birthday was awesome, which it was.

Once gathered at the airport, our group got rides into town, met up eventually at a restaurant called Little Prague, and ate and planned our first day of Ultimate Frisbee clinics tomorrow.  Tomorrow will be just for Israeli peeps, a mix of adults and kids, then Thursday we get a mix of Israeli and Palestinian kids which will be sweet.  Then Friday and Saturday there’s a hat tournament (mix of people with varying skills on freshly made up teams) open to everyone.  There are people who flew themselves out here just to volunteer for this and play in the hat tourney.  Then Sunday we’ll travel back to kids’ villages to try and keep them hooked on frisbee.  It’s a great team of coaches, and seems like it will be a phenomenal event.

I’m tired and must sleep before a series of long days on top of the long days preparing for and traveling here.  Saturday night will be the 100th Anniversary part of Tel Aviv, so that could be a really long one…

Thanks for checking in.

home again

I love my bed.  I love sweatshirts.  I’m really excited for all the foods I’ve been without.  And friends and family and frisbee.

Thanks for tuning in.  I probably won’t write much from here in sunny Seattle, but all these words will stay here until I go out roaming again to add more.

it’s the final countdown

There was a plane crash somewhere in S. Sudan a few days ago, and everybody died.  There’s this guy Yak Yak, who I met once in Wau and who is a great State Field Coordinator for the program, and 12 of his family members were on the plane.  Tragic.  There is a three-day mourning for the victims of the crash, so nobody in government or anything is working except the census people because the census ends tomorrow or something.

 

After three weeks of editing and exporting video all day every day and into the night, then finally finalizing all the videos in Juba Friday, I rode Saturday to Kapoeta, the first field location I went to back in January, and last night we went out to Karakamuge, a village an hour away where I did most of the filming for the Toposa videos.  We set up the phat speakers and projector that the Carter Center threw down on (they bought six sets) for this purpose, and we showed a group of 200+ people the videos, twice.  It was great to watch them watching and enjoying.  They wanted to watch them a third time but it was time to send them home.  I didn’t ask, but my guess is most of them have seen videos once or twice before, or maybe never.

 

I invited a couple folks to come along from the (Carter Center) Democracy program who are here to meet with Census people and Commissioners and stuff, and they tagged along as well.  Neither had been out to the villages yet, and it was fun to be the one in the know, telling them all the tidbits I’d learned or been told before.  Though they’re not as rugged as the folks here in the health program, and I had to help set up tents and listen to high maintenance complainings.

 

I’m a bit used to being here.  When the lady here complained about the shower I just sort of laughed, ‘cause I think that shower is great.  I’m also a bit ready to head home, which I do tomorrow.  Looking forward to friends, family, and many luxuries, like a washing machine – woah.

end of wits

No more.

I leave a week from tomorrow.  I have some things to finish before then.  Holy fudge.  Sweet sweet holy delicious fudge.  Wait for me fudge, I’m on my way.

So, I met with the lady I’m making this Trachoma Training video for today, and we redid some of the voice overs which were clouded by a mysterious fan from last time.  I just couldn’t think how that fan was so loud since that’s just about the only thing I would have been doing when we recorded – listening for shit like that.  And then today, we redid it in a very quiet room, some of it was fine, but then there it was again!  And then I figured it out.  It was the goddamn internal fan of the computer.  Ugh.  Fully thwarted.  So she’ll come back Wednesday since she has a curfew at her compound since they were attacked there some weeks ago or something, and we’ll redo all the bullshit with an external microphone.  All for a training video I’m bored by.  Which means I’m not leaving Juba til Thursday for sure, and still hoping for Saturday to go to Kapoeta to do an actual showing of these videos.  

The internal fan!  Frustrating, but nice at least to have the mystery solved.

Edit edit edit edit…

two weeks

The Sudan national census started today.  It was supposed to start last week, but the South delayed because there are still tons of Southerners living elsewhere as refugees.  So then the international community urged it to go ahead, and so ahead it goes.  Though the South has since said they’re not going to be bound by the results.  So people are supposed to stay at home to be counted.  The thing is, well, there’s a few things.  First of all, the purpose (from the little I know) is to see who gets how much of the incentives agreed upon when the North and South signed the peace in 2005.  So both sides will undoubtedly inflate their numbers.  Plus it’s ridiculous because there’s no way they’re going to get to every house in every village.  No way.  Though the census driver in Ayod did drive super fast.  But I wasn’t thinking – man, he’s gonna get a whole lot of people counted, I thought – Jesus, he’s gonna run over a child.

 

Meanwhile, I’m in Juba steadily editing video and rockin tunes.  The fan is on, and I’ve had many cups of coffee.  I’m calling two of the videos done and done, but all this means is now it’s time to export huge files and work to wait, then wait to work again, while my Final Cut software uses most of my computer’s brain capacity, then I’ll trade things back and forth from my external drive so I can get the vids onto DVD and really be done with them.  Oh, except for getting the files on Steve’s PC, but I’ll figure that out later…

 

In two weeks I plan to be spending the rest of my Kenyan shillings in the Nairobi airport, waiting to fly to Amsterdam, where I will wait to fly to Seattle.  Two weeks is the time frame that usually gets me really excited that something’s actually happening, but time is different here.  Lots can happen here in two weeks.  But I like it as a time frame.

 

Listening to Professor Jay which is Swahili hip-hop, and riding it back into the work…