Author Archives: Kathryn M. McCullough

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Top 10 reasons I’m pretty much a freak


Let’s face it.  I’m not normal.  My partner Sara has always said I was weird—actually her word was “eccentric”—but you get the picture.

At any rate, amid all the seriousness I face living in Haiti, I’ve decided to lighten things up here today by offering you the top ten reasons Sara still insists I’m what you could call—well—“quirky:”

#10.  Left to my own devices, I eat mostly from what my friend Milana and I call the “white food group.”  Edible items in this category include: baguettes, bagels, butter, cream cheese, sour cream, lots and lots of sugar—sugar cookies, cakes, unimaginable amounts of pie crust—and if I were a drinker, which I am not—wine!

#9.  I’m a double fisted drinker.  Not with wine, of course, but with hot and cold beverages, mostly hot tea, Lipton (though since we’ve come to Haiti, coffee has become an option), and Pepsi Max, when I can find it—(Coke Zero, otherwise).  Now, for me, this only works in one direction.  Namely, if I drink something hot, I have to have the cold cola to accompany it.  However, chilled drinks can stand alone—not always needing the hot accompaniment.

 #8.  I tend to collect things—and not the kinds of things most would consider collectables, but which I gather in the name of “potential art”—items I prefer to call “collagables”—buttons, beads, ribbons, rocks, shells, business cards, bottle caps, maps, matchboxes, newspaper clippings, play bills, and, among other things, sales receipts—in my mind the most under-rated and readily available of all the collagables—a free gift with each purchase, so to speak.

#7.  I have a lot of bags.  For a fairly inclusive cataloging, I refer you to a post from 13 July 2009  “Not dog on grass—Not bag on floor—Not bike on . . . .”

#6.  I never use a top sheet.  Don’t believe in them.  Never have.

#5.  I pretty much live with a saint— We’ll call her Saint Sara the Orderly.   (And I have saintly siblings, but I’ll leave that for a later post.)  Sara has “placement issues”—a problem she blames on her training as an architect and which she insists I knew about prior to our partnering and simply can not change, as they are, in fact, evidence of her Saintly origins—rituals of the Order, so to speak.  Bottom line—Sara likes to arrange things: drawers, cupboards, closets, the contents of the refrigerator, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup arranged in tidy rows—like items lined up together—like soldiers—an army of condiments ready for edible action.  Need I say more.

#4.  My partner does disaster response.  She’s a disaster response expert.  Now there aren’t a lot of these people on the planet (though there are quite a few of them in Haiti these days).  I believe (and you are free to disagree), that’s it’s the relative scarcity of this species that makes disasters so, well, “disastrous.”  In all seriousness, I’m grateful that Sara does this kind of work.  It helps make meaning in our lives.   And though that “meaning” often means traveling a lot, we’re not exactly heading to what most would call “vacation destinations.”

#3.  My mother wears clothes pins as fashion accessories.  Actually, at age 72 she uses them as a mnemonic device, so let’s not get all uptight about this one.  However, for further discussion of this semi-strange sartorial habit, I refer you to a post from several days ago called, “Airing Family Secrets Via Haute Couture.”

#2.  I taught at Oral Roberts University.  This may speak for itself—except that I might mention having arrived on campus in 1986, just after Oral sequestered himself in the Prayer Tower for a number of weeks, claiming God was going to “bring him home” if believers didn’t donate 6 million dollars.   I know some of you may be too young to remember this, but it’s true.  He did it.  I was there.  And the play the drama department performed that semester just happened to be—“Death of a Salesman”—I kid you not!

#1.  My father was in the mafia–pretty much, that’s what it boils down to—Enough said.

Now, none of these items in and of themselves makes one weird—not even two or three.  It’s the global picture I’m getting at.

And I haven’t even included here the biggest reason I’m a weirdo.  But, let’s face it folks, we don’t know one another well enough yet for me to share all my secrets.  It seems though the picture’s becoming clearer—

Bottom line–I’m pretty much a freak. 

How about you?

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A Prayer for Haiti


We now know, according to national health officials, that more than 1000 have died from cholera here in Haiti and that Haitian President Preval fears cholera riots will spread to Port-au-Prince today.  Violence aimed at UN peacekeepers began over the weekend in Cap-Haitien and Hinch, as well as smaller towns around the country—this amid unfounded fear that members of a Nepalese contingent brought the disease to Haiti.

In the midst of all this, I feel fairly safe in my small section of the city, Petion-ville, essentially the Beverly Hills of Port-au-Prince.  With 2 armed guards posted at my gate around the clock, whether there’s rioting in the capital or not, I’m blessed with a security so many here are forced to do without.

 Admittedly, Haiti isn’t all that safe for foreigners, especially in this city, where non-Haitians are kidnapped, on average, of once a day—mostly for ransom, sometimes because people are desperate, often because the prison here was damaged during the earthquake, allowing criminals to escape and (still on the loose) commit crimes against the very people who are here to help.  Not more than a month ago someone was kidnapped just outside the gym where I work out most mornings.

Unfortunately, my experience in Haiti is limited by these security concerns and the policies implemented by the NGO where my partner Sara works—one that, unlike some smaller organizations and church groups, has the size and funding to manage risk effectively. 

But I am safe.  And though I don’t work directly in the community, though I don’t go into the camps and feed the poor, I know I am doing my small part, providing a home for Sara and giving her (I hope) the security she needs—the strength to direct a massive disaster response operation for a housing NGO that works in nearly 100 countries.  

The effort sometimes leaves her a little frayed around the edges and me a bit torn up in the process. But, we are blessed to be together, loving one another, learning to love a country that has been fighting now for centuries—fighting first against colonial oppression, fighting later against oppressive dictators, and fighting now a disease that’s dictating the fate of way too many.

Please pray for us.  Please pray for Haiti!

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Watering Change


No water has flowed from the faucets at my house here in Haiti for 2 days, and I’ve decided not having water is way worse than not having electricity.

Bottom line:  I’m not a happy camper—or at least—not happy camping, as the case may be.

At the same rate, I must confess, to living a ridiculously comfortable life here in Port-au-Prince, certainly by Haitian standards.  So, I have no real reason to complain, especially when one considers the more pressing crisis of cholera contaminating the water supply, an epidemic that has killed nearly 1000 in the past few weeks, sickened nearly 20 times as many, and incited violence against UN peacekeepers in a number of towns across the country.

It’s mostly a matter of not having what I’ve come to expect after more than four decades of running water’s near perpetual availability.  To say I’m spoiled would be both true and minimizing of just how comfortable, on some level, I think I’m entitled to be—an ugly truth, I don’t totally know how to change about myself.  Perhaps, doing without is the only way to train myself otherwise.  And it seems it may indeed be a matter of training, relearning how to think about the resources in America we so casually take for granted, waste, complain about, and even don’t know how to survive without when shortages arise.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed, after living in Haiti for a number of months, to come from a country that plays survivor games on television (to the appeal of mass audiences), calling that “reality” TV.   But the sense of entitlement I’m uncovering in myself is exponentially more shameful.

After a chronic illness left me unable to work for a number of years, I’d come to consider myself fairly self-aware, someone who thought about poverty and hunger and wanted to do something to alleviate suffering.  But, too much thinking coupled with not-enough acting, can clearly translate into an hypocrisy I and too many Americans, both liberal and conservative alike, unknowingly live by.

Certainly, I don’t have the answers, not even for myself.  I only know that by the time this piece posts, it’s likely water will again be flowing in my house and complacency will become even easier, once more.  I can only pray that my attitude improves, that I learn to do with less, that I complain less about the little things and do as Ghandi said we should, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

If only I knew how!

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Airing Family Secrets via Haute Couture


Two days ago, on her 72nd birthday, my mother shared her newest mnemonic device.   And I thought, in all fairness, I should pass along the technique, in case you want to remedy your own memory deficits by adopting my mother’s method.

This all came up when I asked my mom to call us in Haiti during our family’s annual let’s-celebrate-mom’s-birthday-event scheduled for yesterday afternoon.

When I asked my mother to make the call, she said, “Well, I’m afraid I’ll forget.” 

I reassured her that she didn’t have to worry.   I would email my sister and ask her place the call. 

“No,” my mother declared confidently. “I’ll just clip a clothes pin to my lapel.”

“Really,” I replied. 

“Of course,” she claimed.  “Someone is bound to ask why I have a clothes pin on my blouse.  And when they do, I’ll remember we were supposed to call you.  It works every time.”

“Every time,” I said, dumbfounded that my mother had used the technique enough to have gathered such data.

“Always!”

“Wow,” I added.  “I think I’ll have to blog about that.”

“Oh, you should! It works really well—-and everybody has an extra clothes pin hanging around!”

“Sure they do . . . “

. . . but—-for those of you whose laundry habits have surprisingly not carried the clothes pin over into the 21st century or, god forbid, who lack the sartorial daring to add clothespins to your accessory repertoire, my mother claims the piece-of-paper-in-the-middle-of-the-living-room-floor technique works almost as well.

But, of course, I wouldn’t want to hang all  my family’s dirty laundry out to dry.

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Breakfast for Haiti


Here’s my struggle—potentially trivial when one considers the overwhelming hunger plaguing Haiti—but I’m on a diet and having difficulty reconciling my personal focus on weight loss with the staggering starvation faced on this relatively tiny island.  When I was renaming my blog, I considered calling it “Breakfast for Haiti: a diet diary from Port-au-Prince.”  I thought I might attach a fundraising feature to the site, so while I was focusing on losing what so many Haitians are desperate (even dying) to gain, I could appease my middle class, American guilt by, at least, increasing the amount of money available to fight hunger here.  But this seemed potentially offensive, in bad taste, at the very least, given the fact that even before the earthquake nearly 2 million people in Haiti were “food insecure,” according to the World Food Program.

I come from a country with an obesity epidemic but live in one plagued with either not enough food or a population too poor to feed itself.  This is a painful irony to swallow—quite literally.

So my question to readers really is: could or would dieting Americans find friends and family members willing to pledge a dollar, or five, or ten for every pound they lose—a diet for dollars of sorts? 

Would you sell a literal pound of flesh to feed the poor?  (Would my former colleagues from the English Department at the University of Kentucky read a diet blog that used Shakespeare’s images in such clichéd ways?) 

Would over-weight folks from the US step up to (or away from) the plate on January 1st and reform their formerly failed New Year’s resolutions?   Would this motivate dieters?  Would they be more committed to this kind of effort?  Would America’s biggest losers get off their fat asses long enough to fill the plates of their mal-nourished neighbors here in Port-au-Prince?  Will morning in America mean breakfast for Haiti?

I’d love your feedback.

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Haiti, cholera, and other mind-bending events


So–the old blog is reincarnated here under a new name!  It is, indeed, the Vietnam version “reinvented” from yet another edgy location–this time Haiti, where a cholera epidemic has spread to Port-au-Prince–my home for the next couple of years, at least.

But before I address the big issues faced here on the western half of Hispaniola, I should clarify why I’ve chosen this new title.  For my less geeky readers, an “event horizon” is the edge of a black hole, a boundary in the space/time continuum beyond which no light can escape—in many ways, a point of no return.  You’ve taken physics; you know this; you’ve just forgotten.

Bottom line–it seems to me, that the far-away places Sara and I have been over the last couple of years have formed a kind of “event horizon” in my mind–taking me to the outer limits of my own comfort zone, shaping new perspectives in me about both the world around me and this time in my life–a bending of my personal space/time continuum, if you will—–mind-bending for me, at the very least.

However, Haiti itself offers a kind of event horizon–a comparison I first found when reading Paul Farmer’s book The Uses of Haiti.  Farmer begins his chapter of the same name with the following epigraph by T. D. Allman:

Haiti is not simply one more of those tropical dictatorships where to rule is to steal, and headless bodies are found by the road.  Haiti contorts time:  It convolutes reason if you are lucky–and obliterates it if you are not.  Haiti is to this hemisphere what black holes are to outer space.  Venture there and you cross an event horizon. (After Baby Doc, 1989)

Wrap you brain around that statement and you may begin to see why I’ve renamed the blog–because this place, this  location has forced me to rethink my beliefs, not only about myself, but also about big issues such as poverty and hunger–and disease, for god sake!  We’re in the midst of a cholera epidemic!  

But even without cholera sickening folks by the thousands, we had an earthquake here last January, a hurricane last week, and a million and a half people homeless in Port-au-Prince today. 

Was the earthquake an event horizon for Port-au-Prince?  Will cholera bend time and space so there’s no escaping the dis-ease that’s plagued this place for centuries?  Is there light for Haiti?

Note:  You might to check out this article about cholera in Port-au-Prince: http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/sudden-death-by-cholera-a-mystery-in-battered-haiti/19712500

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Season’s Greetings from Vietnam


Sara and I, along with our dogs Ralph and Lucy, would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our home in Hanoi.  Without a doubt we would rather be hosting our annual Christmas party from 4th Street, but instead we send you best wishes and warm hugs from our home-away-from-home, along the shores of West Lake in Vietnam’s charming capital.  Hanoi is a city of lakes, and we are fortunate enough to live a mere 20 meters from the city’s largest, grateful to walk our dogs along its shores, despite the thriving mosquito population even into December.

The locals claim it’s cold this time of year, walking the winding streets in winter coats, hats, and scarves, in weather that warms to 70 if not 80 degrees Fahrenheit most afternoons and drops to a mere 60 at night.  Unless things cool off drastically come January, we will have lugged our warmest coats half-way around the world for no other reason than we were told it was “cold” here in the winter, forgetting that “cold” is a relative term, especially for those living in a tropical country, where unless you live at the highest elevations of Himalayas that extend into Western Vietnam, you will have never even seen snow, let alone know what we mean by “cold” that freezes pipes and paralyzes even the heartiest during the sub-zero days of January back home.  For us the weather is perfect this time of year, sunny and clear, and at its coldest what we would call “crisp” in the US.

For those of you who know about our work this fall with the Jimmy and Rosalynn Work Project 2009, the Mekong Build, let us assure you the event was a huge success.  For those of you less familiar with this work, you really only need to know that each year for the past 26, the Carters have hosted a large building project somewhere around the world, partnering with Habitat for Humanity.  This year the Mekong Build happened simultaneously in the five countries through which the river flows—Thailand, Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam.  Here in Vietnam alone we built 32 houses in 5 days and hosted more than 700 volunteers from both Vietnam and around the world.

As the national director for Habitat Vietnam, Sara provided the leadership necessary to make our week a success.  Along with my friend Elizabeth, I scripted and staged the entire opening and closing ceremonies, even writing speeches for Diana Negraponte, wife of John Negraponte, the deputy Secretary of State for George W. Bush.  For Sara all of this was old hat, for me it was the experience of lifetime—literally, dinner with the Carters, chatting at length with Rosalynn.

Perhaps the most touching moment of the week, however, was on Wednesday, when President Carter addressed the crowd in our village church yard.  While the president was talking about his visit being a healing opportunity for our two countries still at war with beginning of his presidency, two veterans of that war sat side by side in the audience, one American, the other a former member of the North Vietnamese army.  As the president spoke of healing and the mending of broken relationships, the two veterans, former enemies, clasped one another’s hands, weeping through the rest of the ceremony.

In President Obama’s inaugural address nearly a year ago, he promised those President Bush termed the axis of evil that we would reach out our hand in friendship, if our enemies would unclench their fist.  In Vietnam it took more than 40 years, but less than four weeks ago enemies one time as formidable as Taliban militants today held hands and wept in friendship, peace, and mutual respect. 

It is this kind of peace, this kind of healing, we wish for you this Christmas.  We may be far away this holiday season, but we too, reach out our hand of friendship across oceans that feel like 40 years —sharing our love for you, our prayers for your well-being.  May you be blessed this holiday. 

With love for each of you,

Kathy and Sara

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Suffice it to Say


So——

Admittedly I’ve neglected this blog.

But–by God, I’m going to modify my delinquent behavior.  I must motivate myself to maintain this commitment.  In other words, I need to get my ass in gear and write.  Whatever happened to my admonition to students to write no matter what—even if what one produced was shit?  Yeah, yeah, I fell off the wagon en route to writerly success—got dropped in a ditch alongside the road to blogosphere bliss.

But—enough about what I’ve not done, and more about what has happened in the last several weeks. 

In short——–

Sara and I returned to Ho Chi Minh City after Habitat Vietnam’s staff and model build, moved 20 suitcases of stuff to Hanoi—another 30 hour trip by train, located and moved into a charming, French colonially inspired house near West Lake.  But after a mere two days in our new home, I returned to the US for a less than two week “opportunity” to check on our Lexington house and the pets we had left there. 

In equally brief terms——–

Let me mention——

The hell that I found there—

An infernal flea infestation and equally hellacious and nauseating odor that turned out to be hard wood floors having absorbed several month’s worth of cat urine—the urine of not just one or two feline friends, but four—four cats whose bladders and kidneys seemed to have worked well in our absence—tragically for all noses exposed to the foul stench.  Clearly, litter boxes were not kept clean—four 20 pound jugs of Tidy Cat were left unopened and unused.  Eleven days worth of scrubbing did not remove the stench.  The floors are ruined—will, at the very least, need to be sanded and refinished, if not totally replaced. 

I won’t mention———-

The rug that Sara had brought back from Turkey—left out on the back porch for weeks, if not months—mud and grass stained.  Probably the most valuable single item in the house, the only possession Sara actually adores—probably destroyed.

I won’t mention———-

That our dog Ralph was so infested with fleas, he had lost massive amounts of hair, was heart-brokenly depressed and alarmingly cowering in response to abrupt movement.  I was sickened.  I wanted to vomit.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to kill.  God help the person who hurt and frightened him—god help whoever you turn out to be.

But all is much better now—

In brief—————-

I had to find homes for our four cats, which thanks to amazing friends I was able to do in a matter of days.  I had to bring Ralph with me back to Vietnam, where he is this moment asleep on the couch next to his canine “sister”—Lucy.  He is playing again and seemingly happy—seemingly content to be back with his family, wherever on the globe we happen to be.

I won’t mention (at this point)——–

Our agonizing journey to get here—stuck in Seoul—overnight in the airport, Ralph in a crate, me wheeling him on a luggage cart—no place to pee—no food to eat—nowhere to sleep.  That’s a separate story—more than I can manage to include here. 

Suffice it to say, that we are all well. 

Suffice it to say———

That Sara and I have celebrated our third anniversary in a part of world I’ve come to love—a place I never expected to live. But we are building a wonderful life here in Hanoi—amid much that is “other” to us—strange but lovely—Hanoi with its winding narrow streets, trees, lakes—

All I imagined Vietnam would be—

Magical, enchanting–take-your-breath away with wonder and grace——with a conical hat kind of peace—pointed and narrow at one end but broad and open at the other.

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DisARMing Saigon Exercise


Early morning fitness efforts in Vietnam seem to involve excessive amount of arm swinging, the rotation of both arms at once from the shoulder, large circular motions.  This may be good for the heart, the circulatory system, the flexibility of the shoulder socket, at the very least.  However, it does little for Lucy, who aggressively barks at the alARMing movement, sharing her apparent displeasure.  Thus, I take Lucy outside for potty purposes, before there’s any chance the neighbors have taken to the streets, wind-milling their way to healthy hearts.

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Jean Threatens Skype Scolding!


So, I just checked my FaceBook inbox, where I had received a message from a friend regarding my blatant lack of discipline when it comes to writing regularly—recording accounts of my many misadventures in Asia, tales of Lucy’s love for beach romping and train riding, stories of Sara’s work with Habitat for Humanity Vietnam and the Carter Work Project.  The thing is——Jean is right.  I am failing miserably in this regard and simply must bully (if need be) my writer self into writerly action.  So here goes—————-

Regarding the journey by train between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, let me assure you, if you have done it once, you don’t need to do it again.   Although the trip takes 30 hours, it is probably worth undertaking on one occasion, so you can see the changing landscape along the length of the country.  And frankly some of the scenery between Da Nang and Hue is stunning.  The tracks run along cliffs which tower over the sea on one side and are dwarfed by mountains on the other.  I don’t think you can see the coast from this perspective by any other means.

However, now that I’ve traveled both directions between Saigon and Hanoi, I’m not inclined to do it a third time, if I can avoid it.  Several reasons———  First, rail travel in Vietnam allows for little privacy and literally no security for your luggage, unless you purchase all four berths in a compartment and bring along a friend who can stay in your space and guard your belongings if you need to use the restroom or take a trip to the dining car.  The compartments do not lock from the outside, and the Vietnamese will welcome the opportunity to move into your space, if you leave it vacant for even a moment or two. 

When friends warned us about this, we, as westerners, found it hard to imagine.  Sara, at least, disregarded this information completely when we stopped briefly in Hue.  I exited the train to take Lucy “potty,” reminding Sara to stay in the compartment.  However, while walking the platform a moment later, I saw Sara behind me.  Panicked, I handed Lucy’s leash off to Sara, RAN for the train, and literally fought my way through the throng to our compartment, where, in a matter of two or three minutes of our being away, two people had moved in with their three suitcases and one over-sized box,  the box encased completely in tape, like a skin.  The box wielding pair did not want to leave!  They were most unhappy.  We clearly had extra room, and that surplus might as well be theirs—no notion of privacy, no notion of personal space!  Gesturing intently toward the empty bunks, arms flailing (they spoke no English;  I spoke just as little Vietnamese) one of the would-be squatters communicated his squatterly intention.  There was nothing for me to do but raise my voice, gesture with equal intent toward the door, stand my ground, quite literally, and indicate my land-lordly ruling on the matter.  Feud ended.

Why else might you not want to travel by train more than once along this route?  The compartments are far from clean, the food is frighteningly impossible to identify, and your space will be shared with roaches and other six-legged creatures  scurrying across the floor and along the wall—no matter your belief in the virtue of personal space—space that is spotless and insect free.

Gosh, Jean, I hope you are happy.  Any and all Skype scolding of this writer in training not necessary!