Things.

We all have our "one thing" - the thing that it will be hard to live with or without. The pit latrines, the lack of fruit, the staring, the this, the that.

But they aren't just one thing. They are many. Added to casual conversation. Whispered in the back of the mind. We are making sacrifices. we must remind others and ourselves that this life is but a 27-month adventure. It is not a natural state.

This collection of "one thing" troubles me. we - I - must give up to live here. I must make do. And those that we are among do they know this too? Are their lives a constant state of deprivation or do they exist in an universe of ignorant bliss? I do subscribe to the "what they don't know can't hurt them" theory of development. But to conclude the other - that they are well aware, that they too have a small pile of "one things" that float around their heads like rainclouds, to conclude that is letting in a downswell of suffering and injustice that I do not have the courage yet to withstand.

I have voluntarily abdicated my "one thing." I have fled the land of HDTV and indoor plumbing for mud huts in the bush. Some speak highly of the Zambian lifestyle - living close to the earth. I too find myself exalting it.

Yet does this concept mesh with the Zambian goals of development? The head principal at a school I visited wanted a posting with a cell phone reception, wanted a computer, wanted a house that was more "humane" than her home with a tin roof and glass windows. The bus boy at the hostel wanted a ticket to America, wanted to meet Beyonce and 50 Cent. Those who have the money want to eat breakfast nshima - a highly processed, more expensive form of grain that lacks any of the nutritutional value found in the simpler village meal.

Do I approach them with the same objective? And if I do want to teach them to improve their quality of life, is it fair to impose this mindset on them? You can develop but only so long as you stay the same. I want your babies to live, your children to learn, your women to stay free, but only so long as your village remains the same, trapped in time. Isn't it wrong to deny the excesses whom which I fled? Or at least the dream of them?

America's pile of stuff, its Lady Liberty statue of electronics and make-up and salad spinners and Mavi jeans, Target aisles and Costcos, it did not make me happy. But I had the choice. Maybe for others, it calls out, its LCD latern burns brighter, it beckons to these huddled masses. Our life in America, chock full of stuff, speaks to others. Its voice is different but the words are the same. It reads the lines well-worn by religious freedom, by opportunity, by upward mobility. "Come here where you will be free. Be happy here."

I believe that this time Lady Liberty is lying. They believe she is telling the truth. How can we work together? More importantly, who is right?

"If i was a spider princess, things would be different..."

I am not a princess, spider or otherwises. Physically, I am no different than the me of 24 hours ago. These same cells and ligaments that now suspend thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean bear no different marks than those that waited tables in Bay Shore, that stocked shelves in Northampton, that dreamed away Washington nights. Still?

A goldfish will only grow as large as his tank allows. When those fins sense that the walls of plexiglass are closing in, the body just stops - a hibernation of development. Drop the same little guy in a backyard pond and he would grow forever.

I am no different. Still, deep in my tissues, in places dark and dangerous, a message has been relayed. The plexiglass is shifting. I am transplanting. Growth, once considered impossible, is a possibility again.

I do not know what shape this new body will grow into. Perhaps I will be a spider princess. Perhaps not. But things will be different.


(written in the plane en route to Johannesberg)