Catching Up

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. But a lot of things have been going on since my last post that kept me distracted—Dr. Maggi showed up, then my family came to visit me here in Sierra Leone, and then the day that they left, six volunteers arrived from the United States! So, it’s been a very busy month. Dr. Maggi performed about 15 surgeries, mostly fistula repairs. We finally got running water at Bo Government Hospital, since WAFF purchased and installed a pump for the well. This is the first time the hospital has had water since 2004. Unfortunately, it’s also the dry season, which means that the hydroelectric dam that powers Bo and Kenema is running low, causing frequent blackouts. We’re dealing as we can, though the power shortages certainly cut into surgery time and make the office even more inefficient.
One of our patients delivered her baby boy, named Doctor Maggi, in early January, so we have a new little wrinkled face on the ward. We’ve said goodbye to two of our most dynamic patients, Alice and Sama, who have been discharged following successful surgeries along with three others. I feel very close to both of them, and their leadership and liveliness is lacking in the ward. We took Alice back to her village, and though watching her return to her element made it easier to leave, I miss her. She gave us a giant cocoyam, a bunch of green plantains, a large papaya, and a live chicken, which spent its trip in the car trussed up in a shopping bag, its head poking out of a hole in the plastic, its angry red eyes dilating at every movement. Every so often it would go ballistic in the back of the car and roll around squawking and flapping inside the bag. It made me a bit nervous, and Alice made fun of me for jumping away from it when she told me to pick it up and it lunged away in a rustling of plastic and pinned feathers.
While returning Alice, we also looked for new patients in the surrounding villages, and we ended up on a wild goose chase for a prospective patient who walked from one village to another before we could find her. Eventually, as the sun began to set over crowing roosters, goats grazing among the cement ruins of houses burned in the war, and sooty kitchens full of hanging baskets, bunches of dried okra, and stacks of clean pots awaiting the evening meal, we found her. On the trip back, she couldn’t stop smiling and spent a good portion of the trip holding my shoulder and stroking my hair, which had become a rats’ nest in the wind from the open windows.
It was amazing to have my dad and sister come out over their winter break to visit. My dad came to see me when I was in Dakar, so he had some frame of reference for what Sierra Leone would be like, but my (vegetarian) sister had never been on the continent before. Both of them were incredibly patient with the transportation issues of this country (a blog post to follow on transportation, at some point) and the other things that go with visiting a place that has very little in the way of a tourist infrastructure. We went to the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary to visit rescued chimps, which were very adept at throwing rocks at visitors and were terrifyingly human. We saw endangered red Colobus monkeys at the Tiwai Island Nature Preserve, where we slept in REI tents and ate beans cooked over an open fire. It made me yearn for the Sierra Nevada, where camping is a lot less humid. We ate, in age-old Robinson tradition, good food, trying out grilled lobsters, Chinese noodles, paneers, various experiments from the Bo market, and a lot of fresh fruit. My poor sister had to eat a lot of falafel, which was often the only vegetarian option, as my dad and I gorged on perfectly roasted, juicy chicken with garlic mayonnaise and Lebanese cheese pies, which are a bit like a white pizza. We did a bit of exploring in Freetown and found it too hectic to endure for long, but we watched masked Sande dancers shuffle through downtown waving green branches and followed by women with drums and shakers and bells.
Now we’re at the end of the trip for three of our volunteers, two of whom were working on a documentary film and one who helped set up our garden, which is now full of sprouting cucumber and squash, and little green shoots of corn and peppers. It’s very exciting. We traveled out to Taiama, a village near Bo, for a church service on behalf of the family of one of our consultants, Samuel Pieh, who is directly descended from Sengbeh Pieh, the leader of the Amistad revolt. It lasted four hours, which would test the limits of a faithful person but for me was tortuous, but our visit was made worth it when a troupe of “cultural” dancers, including Sande maskers and other “devils,” a man on a very thin high wire, and many drummers, showed up at the Pieh household. We also drank palm wine with our host, which isn’t too bad in small doses, if you can avoid the bees and other bugs that get into the drink during the tapping process.
Since then, we’ve been gardening, doing arts and crafts in the ward, and sitting with the patients. I’m still working in the office and I’ve done what I can to help our volunteers with educational programs (family planning/reproductive health as well as first aid) get started. I’ve followed the cinematographer and writer team around as they shot various locations and conducted interviews a bit and taken the volunteers to the market and other Bo hotspots. We’ve begun frequenting Georgetown, a local guesthouse and bar right up the road from the house, and it’s been nice to have a bit of relaxation. It’s a very exciting time to be with the program, since it feels like all of this new blood has increased enthusiasm and excitement within WAFF. And it feels so good to grow things that we will, with hope, be able to offer to the patients (or to eat ourselves, if the patients aren’t feeling brave). Watching little seeds push up and fold out leaves is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. We’ve started our compost pile and built up different types of raised beds. The patients come down when they see volunteers heading for the garden and point out the various ways in which we are doing things completely wrong. We listen to them most of the time, since they are professional farmers and we are amateur putterers at best, but we’re hoping our weird experiments and ideas pan out, so that we can pass on some knowledge to the patients as well, with the goal of giving them the opportunity to improve their diets and those of their families once they go home. So, for now, we’ll be the crazy pumoi with our weird raised mounds for gourd cultivation and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that it will work.

Indiana Jones, Granfalloons, and Finding Ways to be Good

As a young child, I dreamed of being an archaeologist à la Indiana Jones. When I was a little bit older, I found out that archaeologists spent most of their time writing grants and begging for money, and my dream of spending my life in secret caves floored with the crunchy, fortune cookie consistency of millions of crawling insects, my path lit by a torch made out of a human femur and my goal some forgotten idol that belongs in a museum, crumbled a little bit. Unfortunately (?), my life has again led me to a job that is entirely dependent upon the kindness of strangers. I don't like begging for money, but donations are essential to the survival of non-profits and non-governmental organizations like WAFF.

I know how hard it has been this year with our tanking economy. I had hoped that out of this experience, the American people as a whole (if not the global population) could begin to rethink the way they spend their money and to look beyond themselves to see the broader scope of shared humanity and experience, if that makes sense. That we are not alone or simple individuals in little predefined groups (Bokononists call these granfalloons), but that there is a whole world full of people that are a distinct part of who we are and how we live. That buying a brand new car or a pair of shoes or the next generation video game is not as important as being with and caring for others. I think, to some extent, that this has happened. The story I recently read about the stampede at Walmart that killed a temporary worker, however, illustrates that we're not there yet. That it will take longer to heal our need for new things, for possession. Consumerism is certainly something that I struggle with everyday, as I covet this or that, as I see how attached I am to my things. All the same, I have to say that one of the best and most thoughtful gifts I was ever given for Christmas was from my good friend Nickole, who donated money in my name to the Save Darfur Coalition.

All that I ask is that this holiday season, or as birthdays roll around, is that you remember that we are all in this together, that we are all a part of the same living, breathing thing. I've long maintained that if everyone made a sacrifice, even a small one, in their own lives, then the world would be a better place--take shorter showers, give $5 a month to the cause of your choice, buy a bus or subway pass for the person behind you, smile at someone, anything. You don't have to be a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, a communist or a capitalist, to do this. Anyone can, and almost every philosophy, or political belief, or religion, or whatever system you adhere to, advocates some form of philanthropy or sacrifice or aid to others, whatever you wish to call it.

I'm not asking you to donate to my cause, the West Africa Fistula Foundation. I won't be disappointed if those few of you reading this blog decide that you'd rather spend your money elsewhere. I'm just suggesting that, as the holidays approach, you think about donating money to a non-profit or an NGO as gifts for family and friends. If you want to donate to WAFF, you can follow the instructions on the site here (no pressure, I promise). If you have another organization you'd rather give to, please do so. If this doesn't sound like your bag, then keep doing your holidays as you've always done them. We're all here, thrown together, in this incredibly messy and complicated place, and it's not always pretty or happy or encouraging. But it only takes a little bit, the simplest acts of kindess or selflessness--things that are so small that they seem insignificant--that change everything, that affect everyone. So, take a chance on one of these small acts, and no matter how or where or when you choose to do it, you'll have done something good for all of us.

From Slow Slow to Fever Pitch

This might seem a little silly, but as we were narrowly avoiding the tenth pedestrian who stepped out a little bit too close to the car, bouncing through bad stretches on the road, and trying to keep all of the boxes stacked in the car inside the car and not falling out the windows, I thought of a Disneyland ride based on a typical jaunt through Bo. It starts off innocently enough--you have to clamber into a very tall van while managing about 5 bags, then somehow get your seatbelt on. The car is chock full of people--the nurses, a laundry assistant or two, several neighbors who need a ride to the lorry park--and boxes of medical supplies, which seem to move in a neverending stream from one place to another. The boxes, in fact, look as if they've all been kicked to death, catheters poking out the cracks, disposable gowns about to float out of the ripped top, a bottom or two collapsing its contents all over the floor. Then, we're suddenly climbing up an alarmingly steep hill, wheels spinning madly for traction, stones sending us all flailing. Sharp turns, sudden drops, quick whiplashing stops. Children dart out on the road on the way to school, women carrying baskets wobble a bit towards us, men with no apparent regard for their own safety walk in twos and threes on the narrowest stretches of road, holding hands. It is a ride of constant stress--aren't we coming up a bit fast on that parked truck? Is that baby going to fall off the motorcycle? Why isn't that dog moving?--and quick intakes of breath at the close shaves. Then, all of sudden, we're facing a World AIDS Day parade, coming straight down on us--Get us OUT of here!--and a truck whips around us at the last minute, just before we're about to make our move. We're careening down the street, and it feels like we're going to go up on two wheels at the next curve, and then four motorcycles almost all run into each other in front of us and we brake hard, that feeling of helplessness as I continue to press down on the floor with my right foot, where the brake would be if I were driving. Christmas-themed music blasts out of shops, open trenches leer at the car as if daring us to slip up and get caught in them, police traffic controllers arbitrarily tell us to stop and go (I have seen one stop light my entire time in Sierra Leone, and it was in Freetown). It's a daily adventure getting to work, a series of near-misses and close calls. Everyone seems to have been trained from an early age that pedestrians are supposed to jump backwards when they hear a car horn (I tend to look up, which only further roots me to the spot), and that there is no minimum clearance requirement--as long as no cars are touching, it's all good. Everyone drives and everyone walks like this: courteous behavior is only shown to old women leaving the market and children going to school, and it's beyond dog-eat-dog. Fortunately, the system seems to work for us, for the present, anyway, and maybe our close calls aren't as bad as they seem to me.

Things here have two settings: slow-slow and fever pitch. Slow-slow is what happens when things are inefficient, or a meeting gets postponed again, or when someone is explaining why we don't have something we were supposed to have two weeks ago. Fever pitch is when we're driving, moving heavy things, or just before our Texas surgeon, Dr. Maggi, comes. His visits tend to get everyone into a tizzy of activity, which is of course part of his visit. The rest is for him to complete as many surgeries as he can, and to do them all safely and skillfully (watching Dr. Maggi operate is amazing. I can't explain how nuts it is to watch him essentially make a bladder out of a hole with jagged edges of scar tissue). So, we're about to reach critical fever pitch, since Dr. Maggi arrives tomorrow and beyond his visit, there's the impending return of Helen, our volunteer coordinator and director of program development, with a whole team of volunteers in early January.

Not that we haven't been working hard before, but in anticipation of the transition to volunteer programming, things are starting to speed up. I can't believe it's December, even, though I guess without fire season, mudslides, and Santa Ana winds, it never really feels like winter. Even in New York, when I kicked myself for 4 months for having decided to go to school on the east coast, it wasn't the same. But here, it's just been getting progressively drier and hazier, before the Harmattans set in and bring the real dust from the Sahara and before what I hear are cooler December and January months, cool enough to grow healthy carrots and large tomatoes in the North, or maybe even here. We'll be experimenting when the volunteers come with tomatoes and carrots in our volunteer/patient cooperative garden, so I'll be able to see how much truth there is in that. All I know is that for now, the thunder rattles farther and farther off, the lightning continues to flash, but the rain never comes. Or it comes in little spurts that sound like someone has thrown a bucket of water on one part of the roof. And that I'll be in Freetown tomorrow, and then the December sprint begins in earnest.

Being Thankful

Thanksgiving is hard to explain here because the notion of "thanksgiving" already exists as a mostly Christian event that typically raises money (I think for the church hosting the event--haven't quite figured it out). For example, I was invited to a Mother's Day Thanksgiving this coming Sunday at the New Harvest Ministries, and the invitation is an envelope--so you know right off the bat that this is all about the collection plate. The parade and "Medical Sunday" I wrote about in October was also a Medical Thanksgiving. This makes describing American Thanksgiving a little more difficult. As I told my friend Lisa last night, Halloween was easier to explain because it was an entirely new concept. Plus it's easy to convey in pictures, unlike Thanksgiving, which is a typically American display of overindulgence (in the best way possible, of course) coupled with awkward family moments. Yes, it is also a nice time to have the family all together and to remind oneself to be thankful for what one has. None of this comes out well in pictures.

So, when I say that today is Thanksgiving to the nurses and administrators, it doesn't really come across. Maybe partially because I'm in a country that survived the bad end of colonialism, while American Thanksgiving is a celebration of the arrival of the very kind of people that brought colonialism in the first place. It's sort of weird to explain the history behind it, and it always reminds me that America is in fact a settler colony. The difference between the success of these Anglo-Saxons (and other foreigners, of course) and those that were in, say, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe or South Africa or those French in Algeria is that our forefathers managed to kill off such a large portion of the indigenous population that resistance was easier to quell. That's the simplified version, anyway. And again, sorry to be an obnoxious historian on Thanksgiving--as a foodie, I love the holiday, as a historian, I feel the need to bring this stuff up. I apologize.

But here are a few things that I am thankful for:

--The patients on the ward and the ones that have gone home. They are my emotional stability and the reason that I can get through the frustrating moments. I was looking at pictures of the women who have gone home (I even dreamed that one of them had come back last night), and it made me so happy to think of them getting back to their lives but still sad that I wouldn't see many of them again.
--Gmail. Although it's always dumping me, there is no better way to bother people at work and bombard them with questions about their lives. I do not think I'd have made it this far without it, and the idea of trying to do this without internet or computers is daunting--Thanks, digital age.
--Rat traps and bug spray. Not a lot of explanation needed, though I did try to kill the world's largest cockroach last night and missed, which was not ideal. There was also a wasp the size of my thumb in the kitchen--jet black with an orange warning circle on its butt--but I was too much of a wuss and had to have our caretaker, Amara, kill it.
--Really good fruit and pretty decent bread. You have never tasted a banana until you've gotten away from those nasty American one-variety tasteless ones and tried the fat little yellow ones, the red spicy ones, etc, etc, etc. The papaya here? Amazing. I am so excited for mango season, I don't know how I'm going to make it to March, when the first ones are ready. The handmade Fula bread is pretty nice, especially toasted in the oven.
--My friends and family back in the US and around the world. Some of you have been better than others at keeping in touch, but I love and miss all of you and can't wait to see you all again.
--Being here. Yeah, it's cheesy, but I feel so lucky to be in Bo doing what I'm doing. I love it here. Again, all I have to do is to walk down to the ward and see all the patients sitting together laughing at the television, or remember driving through villages with our speakers blasting outreach advertisements while women scramble to write down our number with their fingers in the dirt, or dream about the plans for a ward garden that will be started in January, and that's enough for me--it beats getting stared at all the time, or being seen as another foreigner with endless amounts of cash, or having my head bang against the car window as we navigate a bad road.

I know it's been a tough year economically, which always dampens the holidays, but I hope all of you (Americans at least) are having a good day with family and friends and that you take time to think about what you're really thankful for. I won't get into one of those self-righteous "be-thankful-for-what-you-have" rants, no worries.

Oh, and to end, I have to put two very nice opinion pieces in the New York Times about Thanksgiving history and food. Two of my greatest loves.

Sutures

In my inventorying duties, I sorted thousands of surgical sutures (the needle and thread that you use to sew up a patient) into grey plastic bins by a tiny number at the top of each packet. These were homeless sutures that had been taken out of boxes or that had fallen out or that were rescued from boxes that were falling apart. At best, a tedious enterprise. I spread them out over the living room floor in a carefully-constructed system so that each bins of sutures of the same type (silk, prolene, chromic catgut--my favorite) were touching and unlike sutures were not. This task satisfied my compulsive list-making sickness but reaffirmed that I have a difficult time with small repetitive tasks. We finally got them over to the office today, a somewhat anxious procedure for me as we had to put the topless bins in the car to be jostled around on the bad roads. Fortunately they all made it, and they were counted and stacked into neat rows and inventoried. Actual "packing" into the storeroom is pending, but I am triumphant as I write that, barring earthquake or civil unrest (both pretty unlikely), we have won the suture war. My war against the insects, however, is not going well ever since our détente failed in early November. One step at a time.

Catching Up

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted. Since Barack Obama won the election, I've been out on a mini-vacation to the Banana Islands off the Freetown area coast, attended countless meetings, ridden government buses for a total of 18 hours, and attempted to make cookies, which came out weirdly cakey from the powdered milk and margarine and blackened on the bottom from the intense heat of the oven, which does not go much below 400 Degrees Fahrenheit. Not sure what you're supposed to cook in there, though it makes great toast.

We've now sent off twelve patients and gotten I think 10 more from various outreach programs. We sent nurses out to the rural areas, and they recruited patients through advertising on the radio and driving around in the car with a megaphone blasting, as well as collaborating with our outreach coordinators and various friends in the public health/medical sector in different regions. Some patients were sent solo and picked up at the lorry park, others came with nurses, and some are staying home until after the holidays and the local chieftancy elections. Which is good because it means that these women are voting and are passionate enough about voting to put off their medical problems.

Banana Island was a strange, almost eerily sleepy place. The trees were imposing but beautiful, old buttressed cotton trees that shaded the beaches. We had to cross through the jungle to get to the best beach (Big Sand Beach). I saw vines crisscrossing up trunks and choking the trees, so incorporated into their hosts that I couldn't tell where one plant ended and the other began. Tiny flowers peeked out from the dark soil, and termites demonstrated their presence in jutting mounds and in the fallen branches on the ground that had been eaten from the inside out, so that they were left as sawdust in the shape of branches. The water was warm but cool enough to stay in for hours, the high salt of the water making it easy to lie, toes pointing upwards, and float on the waves. I managed to borrow a pair of goggles for a few minutes and watched subtly beautiful fish--small but bright, or large but only colorful when they caught the light the right way. The tideline detrius was not what one typically sees at the beach--shells, kelp, bits of styrofoam and sea glass. Rather, it was jungle castoffs from the trees threatening to overtake the water--vivid green praying mantises, small red bugs with huge antennae, leaves in various states of decay, and strange seed pods and plant buds plucked off by wind and driven into the water. We ate fresh fish grilled for us on charcoal fires and lobsters caught in traps and stored, live, until dinner. We swam at night, using the moon and the bonfire lit for us to keep our bearings and slept all day on the beach between swimming and volleyball (I didn't play--not a great game for we shorter ones). Like many things here, it had that element of decay or of recovery that I've sensed in parades and ramshackle buildings and the little kerosene lamps lit for nightmarkets. I also traveled out to the village of Charlotte outside of Freetown before heading to Banana, and it was much the same--old, mossy walls, rusting zinc-walled Krio houses, a shaded garden of found objects, plants potted in old shampoo bottles and benches made of car scrap metal. Children fishing with string and a bent nail. There was also a waterfall.

The new patients are quiet but already seem to have integrated into the "family"--they're getting their hair braided, carrying water (still no water at the hospital and the Bowser water trucks can't come today because the dam has some problems that has prevented them from being filled), watching soap operas. We're trying out best to fatten them up for surgery. We also have a new baby on the ward, who is going to be named Julia, I am told. I find this completely terrifying--there is something very scary in having a little life named after you, especially when you did nothing to merit it. The baby is huge, her head still deformed a bit from the natural birth, but the labor was quick, I'm told.

The calm or feeling of commonplace-ness that surrounds these births is also so new to me. The mother started feeling pains at 7pm, waited until midnight to tell the nurse, who waited until 4AM to tell the doctor that she was ready to deliver. It was treated like no big deal, and the mother was up and walking around just a few hours later and was out carrying water today. Women routinely do hard manual labor in their later terms, walking long distances with heavy loads for the market or fetching water. I know this is all healthy and fine, but it's so funny compared with the lack of this commonplace-ness in the US, which is partly because you don't see as many pregnant women or hear about as many births. I've been around more pregnant women in the past couple of months than I have in my entire life, though I guess it's cheating a bit since I'm in a hospital. All the same, I see tons of pregnant women walking around on the street just on my drive to and from the hospital. I once tried to compare the number of pregnant women I see everyday to the number of men I see urinating in public, but it was too hard to count because there was one or the other or both at every turn.

So, things are changing and progress is being made. My own activities have been relatively uninteresting--inventorying, writing documents, signing things, etc--but I feel like we're getting there, or getting somewhere. Sorry for the long delay between posts--I'm hoping the internet at the hospital continues to hold out, because otherwise it's hard to stay up-to-date.

Staying Out of the Hammock

I feel so far away from the U.S. here that I can't accept the election is today and that in a few hours, the polls will open. There is constant talk about the election--everyone has asked me whether I'm voting for Obama or McCain--and the radio has been buzzing with it, especially the BBC, which has termed it "the U.S. election--the vote that effects your world." It's amazing and a bit embarrassing that people here know more about the election than I do and actually listen to the campaign speeches. It really shows how prominent the U.S. is globally and how important this vote is, not just for we Americans, but for everyone. It actually makes me a little sad that I'm not home to witness this, "the most watched election in history," though I'm so apathetic at this point (heartbroken would be more like it) that probably I'd be even more removed than I am now if I were back in Ojai. I was listening to the BBC's special "Black in America" series this morning. The segment was on Morehouse and there was a discussion about MLK. I was shocked upon remembering how recently the entire nation was essentially at war over civil rights. A couple of days ago, thinking about the psychic damage that civil war inflicts on a nation and the differences and rivalries that still exist between North and South, and realized the American Civil War wasn't that long ago either. In Senegal I sadly corrected friends of mine who said that they wanted to go to America rather than France because there was no racism there--that we'd solved that issue with the civil rights movement.

Race in Sierra Leone is a strange thing. There are definite colonial throwbacks, where white people working for the NGOs have instituted behaviors and have expectations of treatment that I find extremely uncomfortable. Being given more food during parties and gatherings is one example. I've been called "a real African lady" because I do some of my own laundry, occasionally eat local food, (very) rarely wear African clothes, and carry things around, like shopping bags, chairs, and other items, both heavy and light. I'm not tooting my own horn here for being such a good person that I carry my own bags; what I'm trying to say is that the expectations of what expats/white people are capable or willing of doing is very low because many of those pumoi (the Mende word for foreigner) don't do anything for themselves. It's actually a little frustrating at times to have everyone on the staff smile at me encouragingly because I was able to figure out cooking okra all on my own. This frustration comes out of embarrassment that the people who come here to work for NGOs allow others to do the things they should be doing for themselves. I'm not saying everyone who comes here to volunteer should do all their own laundry (I'm certainly not capable of washing my own sheets by hand), but I think that there is a fine line between seeking out help when you need it and becoming a neocolonialist. The image (that I've already evoked) of French colonial administrators getting carried around in hammocks on their tours through "the bush," while lines of forced porters carry their clothes, phonographs, pernod, carpets, and tents behind them, never leaves me.

Furthermore, I've had confusing conversations with a few merchants of Lebanese origin (most of them were born in SL but don't have citizenship--a sticky subject). They consider themselves Africans but hold themselves apart, generally speaking, and there's a continual "us and them" mentality, even for the black Sierra Leoneans that have worked for them for years. One Lebanese diamond merchant said that the reason why Sierra Leone was "backwards" (his words, not mine) was because they kept their "superstitious" beliefs. Another Lebanese shopkeeper said that "they" can't be trusted because his workers steal from the shelves. In both cases, I didn't know what to say. There's also some tension in this of class/economics, since the Lebanese community has a fair amount of influence, despite its lack of citizenship (and vote, I think--I keep hearing different things) and has cornered the diamond market. Most of the merchants we buy bulk food from are Lebanese, and every "supermarket" has a Lebanese son behind the register.

I think about all of this often but don't have much concretely figured out. What I've written here feels clumsy. Race and racism is complicated here, as it is anywhere. The system is always different and is always subject to the history of the place. Racism in France is different from racism in the U.S. is different from racism in Sierra Leone. I try to be aware of my behavior, speech, and expectations, so that I don't end up in that "us and them" mentality that is so easy to accept, especially as a foreigner as well as being of a different race. And I continue to seek out what the different communities think of each other here. And, I keep washing my own underwear by hand because that, I can do on my own.