 If you happen to be in Salem, Massachusetts next week, take a moment to see Dogtown Redemption at the Salem Film Festival! The screening will take place in Cinema Salem at 5:20PM on Sunday, March 6th. As of this posting, tickets are still available for online purchase.
In addition, if you are interested in screening the film in your area, please get in touch! As Amir says, You can “help us shed a compassionate light on poverty, addiction, and homelessness as we explore better ways to address these challenges together.” All opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Dogtown Redemption's directors, producers, funders, or other associated entities.  Bay Area: brace yourselves for the first local screening of Dogtown Redemption! We’re happy to announce the film will be screening at The New Parkway in Oakland, California.
Tickets for the screening are selling fast, but are available here. If you are unable to get a ticket, stay tuned as we are actively working to secure additional screenings in the Bay Area. After the film we will host a Q&A with co-directors Amir Soltani and Chihiro Wimbush, as well as two of the recyclers featured in the film, Jason Witt and Landon Goodwin. Hope to see you there! All opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Dogtown Redemption's directors, producers, funders, or other associated entities. 
In October, Dogtown Redemption moved crowds in the Bay Area’s Mill Valley Film Festival, earning Audience Favorite honors from its sold out screenings. Now, the film will premiere to a national audience.
Dogtown Redemption’s premiere is Monday, May 16th at 10pm on PBS Independent Lens. I can’t tell you how excited I am for this premiere. In total, 6 years of work went into this film (2, of which, I was involved as Associate Producer), along with over 300 hours of footage, thousands of pages of transcriptions, and countless hours with our friends in West Oakland. While it took longer than expected, maybe it was meant to be released at this time. It’s an election year, and while the American economy is growing at the fastest pace in years, it’s clear that it’s a system which only truly benefits a few. The middle class is shrinking. Poverty is becoming more common. But income inequality, poverty, and the myriad problems which come with them are receiving scant attention from both the candidates and the electorate. My hope is that Dogtown Redemption can help to change this. Every Monday before the May 16th premiere, I will write a new blog on poverty, addiction, and other subjects relating to the film. And since this is an effort to start (or rather, contribute to) a conversation, I encourage readers to post responses below, or to respond on Twitter with the hashtag #DogtownCountdown. (Clever, right? I just thought of it.) You can learn more about the film at www.dogtownredemption.com, or by following the film on Facebook. And since this wouldn’t be a proper blog without some self-plugging, I hope you follow me on Twitter as well. You can view the trailer for Dogtown Redemption below.
All opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Dogtown Redemption's directors, producers, funders, or other associated entities.
 They exist in different directions.
Like most moments of clarity, his genius was more accident than miracle. It was written on a draft manuscript for a local theater production. The author, who spoke English as a third or fourth language, had meant to write exit. But there it was, the deepest profundity I had ever laid eyes on. And it was a typo. They exist in different directions. What is the shape of love? What is its texture? I had always thought of her as borderless, shapeless. Yet definite. How? I’ve held love in my arms, yes, but she also molded my thoughts, my dreams; wet clay on her docile hands. She gave me shape, she gave me texture, but how did she give what she didn’t have? They exist in different directions. What is the sound of love? What is his voice? He taught me how to speak, though first not in words. Those brilliant eyes - they take me back to a time before before I thought of me as me - are my living memory of love. Have I never told you? These words were his long before I ever wrote them, but why doesn’t he speak? They exist in different directions. I came back to her, however briefly, and we drank the same cup from a well of sorrow. I left again, we moved forward. But this hollowness - you feel it too, don’t you? - this hollowness lingers. Emptiness by definition can’t grow, yet, it does, doesn’t it? Love’s Tractatus; a problem of language. Our emptiness has no shape. Our emptiness has no sound. They exist in different directions. But emptiness -- is it bad, really? Is it bad to have more space to be filled? Is it bad to have that capacity -- to love without limits, without burden, without end? Your emptiness, does it hurt you? Or do you do as she did, and mold a life with it? Or do you do as he did, and fill it with the echo of your song, a song beyond words? They exist in different directions. Photo by Sepa Sama  Almost every decent thing I’ve written started with a doodle
Evil stick men at war, throwing spears at a poorly-drawn chimaera, Who is protecting some unknown secret or treasure which is conveniently off the page. The chimaera – did I mention it is also a robot? – remembers that it can breathe fire, and spears that once tore through it bounce off its mechanical limbs, and soon the men and all they covet is on fire My doodles always catch fire. Then I remember – some letter must be written, some work performed for what is apparently the work of grownups – drafting constitutions and consulting with non-profits, the work of an alleged young professional, work which is all too devoid of robotic chimaeras and their spear-hurtling opponents. I crumple the doodle, and miss the trashcan as usual, and get back to my humorless war, whose spears come in reams of paperwork and unanswered emails. Still, I laugh. Maybe one day, the world will see I’m a chimaera. And a robot. Photo by Sepa Sama.  Come; let me take you to a place before it no longer exists.
Some of us are soul-bound to the night. We wake up the same hours as everyone else. We work the same hours as everyone else. And too often, we sleep – though a part of us begs us not to – at the same all-too-early hour as everyone else. At first, we fight it, and in our youth our nights are sacred. The authority and order (sometimes shackles) imposed by the world around us is lifted, temporarily, and the night speaks to us. In the whisper of the wind. Or its howl. Night air is chilled, but not malicious, and our lungs breathe, and create, the very vapor of the sky. And if you’re lucky enough to live by the sea, as I’ve learned, you know those precious hours where the ocean becomes as unknowable as the spaces in between stars. You see the world as it ought to be, or perhaps as it truly is: borderless, nameless, a fold and continuum where there’s no difference where the water meets the sky, or where starlight competes with streetlight. Every ocean is a star, every star, an ocean. By morning, the world is yours. The stars, the ocean, the whole of the night is reflected in your eyes, and through your eyes the night sees that brighter world for the first time. But there comes a day – never marked on a calendar, never mourned in a journal – that we stop looking up, and we stop staying up. Maybe it’s attrition, or entropy. Maybe it’s the shackles, the prisons we put ourselves in. I don’t know – and may I never know – but I’ve watched daily as the light in others has died, and I’ve seen the empty spaces – the space in between stars – consume hearts, consume lives. Our worlds never truly end in a bang, but in a whimper. We become Hollow Men. I’ve felt those spaces – I think most of us have – sometimes growing, sometimes receding. Waxing, waning. Most days, a crescent. On the worst days, a gibbous. Today was such a day. A friend of mine once told me that the body travels much faster than the soul. He’s an immigrant, though not by choice – an enemy of the revolution, an artist in exile. He spoke of a longing that he couldn’t define, a separation, a disconnect, an odyssey. I didn’t ask him then, but I wondered where his soul was, in that hour, on that night (we always met at night). Was his soul catching up to him? Was it walking? Was it swimming? Flying? On a bicycle? Perhaps more important, did it know the way? Or what if it refused to travel? Like when you force yourself awake, though your heart is still in dreams, what if the soul simply stayed put? Or what if it stayed with someone else? Today I felt that gibbous space, perhaps where my soul had stayed, and I tried to fill it with forgetting. But forgetting doesn’t fill the space between stars. So I tried to fill it with silence, but silence doesn’t fill the space between stars. So I tried to sleep away the emptiness, but sleep – the silent kind of forgetting – would not come, and would not fill the space between stars. There was nothing to do but to tire myself. I swept my floor. I cleaned my dishes and clothes. Last, I took out the trash, to the garbage can outside. And outside, there was something different. I looked on into the night, and I felt something, in the sea, in the stars, in the wind, in myself. Tired, now, I wondered – should I walk to the sea, or should I simply go sleep? Tonight, I learned: you must never sleep when your heart wants to tell you something. There’s a small crag, out toward the peninsula, and from the looks of it there hasn’t been anything there in ages. Its combination of rock and sea are like any in this area – barren, ancient, violent, isolated – but yet, in that spot, there’s something special. Maybe it was an illusion, my tired mind playing tricks and telling lies, but there, on the edge of desert and sea, in that fold of water and sky, I could see the light in the space between stars. I could see all the worlds laid out before us – those that never were, those that are yet to be, those we are yet to create. I could see you. I could see myself. I could see everything. I could feel that space inside me evaporate, replaced only by brightness. All I had to do was look up, and stay up. And when I came back home, I could still see these things, and I could still feel the brightness. I hear the wind in both its whispers and its howls. And the darkness, just beyond my artificial lights, trickles through my windows and brings my lungs the very vapor of the sky. Tonight I breathe. Tonight I remember. Tonight I speak. But there are plans for my hallowed place, and they have shovels, and bricks, and mortar. And every morning, their shovels dig a little deeper. Soon, they will build their walls, forcing a border on the borderless, authority and order (some might say, shackles) on the orderless. They will place a fence between the ocean and the sky. And to keep the neighborhood safe, they will ensure that streetlight always trumps the starlight. That crag will whimper, will be forgotten, will fall silent. And one day, no one will look up from that sacred shore again. Come; this is where I want to take you, before it doesn’t exist.  She spoke but Her words were not words still I heard Her – thought I heard Her – If one can hear through shadows I lay alone in this room, this room that had become my heart profound solitude where all were unwelcome and met with half-smiles, trivial bard-song, a jester, filling the holes in his heart with every laugh but the one he longed to hear But Her words – Her shadows – Sang of gratitude, devotion, Of Faith which makes music of the holes in our hearts, flute-like, A symphony of life written in laughter and tears – profound multiplicity where all are welcome and met with sincere smiles Thus She spoke in words that weren't words And I heard Her – Still I hear Her – As tonight I whisper to the shadows  “The one moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water, and all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one moon.”
Yung-chia Ta-shih As a species, we harbor the curious tendency to revert to a strange dualism when observing global problems. We find it easy to understand and, in fact, intuitive that a global decline in oil production will affect our pocketbook, or that the poor environmental regulations of other nations can harm our air quality. These and other issues very clearly transcend borders. Indeed, these examples are so obvious and straightforward that it may seem silly to the reader for me to mention them. And yet, when it comes to problems of a more social nature, compartmentalization occurs. A common question I’ve faced, even in my short, unremarkable career as a humanitarian and activist, is as follows: “Why are you working to address the issues over there? We have those same issues here.” Where, precisely, are the here and there are of little importance. The key concept which escapes the enquirer is that the problems of the here and the there are in fact the very same problem. For some reason we remain blind to this singularity. We don’t believe, or are unable to see, how the extreme poverty, or lack of education, or of jobs, in other places and with other people damages our own lives and livelihood. We don’t believe, or are unable to see, that the lack of freedom and self-determination of the world’s disenfranchised dissolves and corrodes our own precious right to these same things. Instead, we operate under the illusion that we can create an isolated society of perfection – that we, as Americans, or Iranians, or Chinese, or whatever title, can achieve utopia without the so-called others. And indeed, our shortsighted vision more often than not boils down to nationalism: American issues are American issues. Iranian issues are Iranian issues. Chinese issues are Chinese issues. What escapes us is the truth, which is a step further: Human issues are Human issues. Human issues, as with all issues, ignore borders as do migratory birds or butterflies. The Human web is far greater and more interconnected than the economic web, or the environmental web, or any other, as it contains every other. Human lives and Human issues are a great storm of interconnectivity. All crises for all time – past, present, future – collide against our bodies daily, as we bob helplessly against the waves of our own bewilderment. Only in the information era have we truly begun to physically sense these waves. They come at us in incomplete soundbites, sentences, and memes – our 24 hour news networks, our social media, our mail, our televisions, our radios. Maybe we’ve heard about some of the abovementioned problems. Maybe we’ve heard about all of them. But most of us have grown numb to them. The overwhelming force of our personal bewilderment, combined with a lack of spiritual acuity, prevents us from understanding our place among the waves. No wonder, then, that compartmentalization becomes our mode of course. Numbness is our escapism. Numbness focuses only on the immediate problems – the waves which hurt us, directly, the most.  I’ve been in a love for 4 years which I can only describe as a love in transit. A slow, often painful pilgrimage to a promised land which often seems more dream than reality. Distance, whether in platonic or romantic relationships, places us in such transit – a path in between one dream and another, one reality and another, one life and another. In these in-between worlds, one finds the cathedrals and graveyards of the heart. In these in-between worlds, love is either consecrated or killed.
Love in transit requires tremendous faith, faith straddling the borders of insanity: Faith in yourself, that you can navigate your paradox of emotions, that you can respond rationally rather than emotionally in cases where distrust and jealousy may arise, and emotionally rather than rationally when rationality would have you end everything; Faith in your lover, to do the same; Faith in the path, even as the path denies you each other’s presence time and again, even as friends and strangers along the path insult your love, qualifying and quantifying something they have neither seen nor heard nor felt, even as the path wears your soles and souls, even as the summit of one hill reveals still more hills; Faith in your lover, to be honest about her feelings, to offer what support she can, to recognize and avoid temptations, to communicate both the spectacular and mundane so that you might share in each other’s lives, to trust you not blindly but with the blinding light of love in her eyes; Faith in yourself, to do the same. I would love to say my faith were always so adamantine, that my faith were immovable as a mountain. Often, I feel it is, but other days my faith wavers in the wind as a reed. Even on the good days, I feel that each moment I am denied my love is a moment wrestled with despair. One thing I’ve learned – the degrees of separation between despair and exaltation are minute and pliable. In any moment each can wrest the soul from its stillness and into torrid thrashing, as the gnawing numbness of loneliness clashes with the love-cries of a soul pregnant with earthen joy. I use the word torrid deliberately – because to love in such a way is a fever-induced madness. To truly love we must suffer such madness. And to truly have faith we must be madly in love not only in all we are given, but in all we are denied. I struggle to conclude these thoughts, because just as a traveler’s journal cannot end until the journey is completed, this love in transit, while in its fourth year, must cover still more time and distance before this chapter can be reasonably concluded. So tonight I end here, and offer these words as I offer my life – as a footnote in that global love story we call living.  Last week was a crazy one for me in Luderitz! Since the end of last month, I have been meeting regularly with the social workers here at the hospital in Luderitz, working out ways we can collaborate on various projects. Though I’m placed with the Ministry of Youth, I’m still a community health volunteer officially – so what better place to get involved with health projects than, well, the Ministry of Health?
We have several plans for future projects and collaborations, but this past week we implemented our first project together: a week of activism against substance abuse. Like too many places, Luderitz suffers from the abuse of alcohol and drugs by some of its citizens. This leads to cycles of violence, mental illness, long term health problems, and many other issues. And even under the best circumstances, alcohol often creates gnawing financial difficulties for many families, as household heads spend money that should be used on education or food on one more beer. Further, alcohol contributes to other problems in Namibia, as intoxicated individuals are less likely to use a condom, in spite of the wide availability of free condoms throughout much of Namibia. The Week – What Did We Do? The Week of Activism program for the past week was suggested by my colleague Praise, one of the social workers at the hospital in Luderitz. Praise is an incredibly intelligent and motivated social worker – and more importantly, he has the perfect heart for his line of work. Praise and I discussed a few goals we had for our week of activism – first, we wanted to target youth in a long-term way through the creation of new TADAH (Teenagers Against Drug Abuse and HIV) groups in our local schools. Second, we wanted to forge relationships with youth and professionals in Aus and Rosh Pinah, 2 distant communities served by the hospital in Luderitz. And third, we wanted to begin conversations with alcohol suppliers in Luderitz – not to threaten their business, but to encourage them to take responsibility to prevent excessive drinking and to report violent drinkers to the police. Monday – On Monday, we visited the 2 secondary schools in Luderitz and had conversations with principals and life skills teachers. We discussed the importance not only of bringing these messages to students, which these schools are already doing quite well, but of creating opportunities for students to share these messages among one another, and with the broader community as well, through our TADAH groups. The meetings were successful, and this week I will have exploratory meeting with the youth of both schools to see where they would like to take their TADAH groups! Tuesday – Was the same as Monday, except we took the message to 2 primary schools. We also have exploratory meetings with these schools taking place, though they will occur at a later date. Wednesday – On Wednesday, we drove about an hour and a half to Aus, the nearest city to Luderitz. Aus is a remote community with a small health clinic and youth center, but with few in-town resources in terms of social work or after school youth activities. For this first visit, Praise and I presented to roughly 40 youth in grades 6 and 7, and also discussed with teachers how we might collaborate in the future. Thursday – On Thursday, we drove nearly 3 hours to Rosh Pinah, a mining town close to the South African border. Here, we presented to nearly 80 secondary students on the effects of drinking alcohol at a young age and strategies to say no. For this presentation, we also collaborated with the Rosh Pinah police, who discussed the dangers of various drugs to the youth. This presentation was especially rewarding, as afterward a handful of the students, as well as one of the teachers, thanked us for our presentation and asked us to come again sometime. Friday – On Friday, we got our boots dusty and visited bars in Area 7, one of the poor, corrugated-iron shack communities in Luderitz. The bars, called Shebeens, are notorious for often selling alcohol on credit to already poor communities, in spite of the fact that this practice is illegal. In total, we had conversations with 13 bar owners, reminding them of the laws of Namibia, encouraging them not to sell to minors, and giving them the numbers of police officers to call should violent customers come to their business. In addition, we supplied about 1500 free condoms total, in hopes of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STIs. Overall, the bar owners were quite friendly to us, and were very open about many of the problems which they encounter. I can’t say for sure whether or not they will be true to what they told us, but at the very least we have confronted them with the problem, and the responsibility they have to reduce these issues as much as they can. When you combine this busy schedule with a World Cup in full swing, you can imagine the kind of week I had! But truly, I hope there are many more like this one – small actions, big smiles, and important conversations. What else could a Peace Corps volunteer ask for?  One of the best things about conducting the needs assessment discussed in the previous blog is the opportunity it gives you to truly understand the landscape of a place. Why reinvent the wheel when good projects are already in place? Or worse, why create a wheel that doesn’t fit? Or worse worse, why create a string of bad metaphors and finish them off with a self-aware unintelligent sentence?
Regardless of the quality of my metaphors or sentences, I can honestly say that I’m facing each day with a smile. Today, on my 40 minute walk to a local primary school, I came to a complete stop atop a hill I had walked up many times before. But this time, I saw the ocean churning in a way I hadn’t noticed before. The beauty of this desert – this contrast – strikes me in subtle and profound ways that I still don’t understand, and maybe I never will. And in that moment, I realized for the first time the depth of that brief 40 minute trek – I was about to meet the heads of a local school, people I had never met before, but each word we were about to speak was a seed of possibility. 2 years of growth and beyond, all from this short walk, all from those footsteps up that hill, all from a chance meeting a week before. These meetings, these friendships, and these projects are like the ripples on the sea – sometimes churning, sometimes calm, sometimes invisible under the mist. But the water is always inviting. Below are a handful of the potential projects I’ve discussed with counterparts and friends in the community – some of them are quite long term, others, comparably short. I’m always looking for advice on these things as well, so if there’s anything below that looks particularly interesting to you please feel free to get in touch! Your advice or collaboration is encouraged and respected. School Projects There are 5 public schools and 2 private schools in Luderitz, and each have their own unique needs and pre-existing programs in different areas. So far, I’ve begun collaborations with some of the older students – primarily small scale HIV/AIDS prevention talks and ideas for workshops on self-esteem and becoming a successful person. Last week, I was approached by a social studies teacher at one of the primary schools about seeking funding for a media center and additions to their library books. We’ve begun exploring this through groups associated with Better World Books. These guys are incredibly motivated – so if you have any information on how to make this happen, please get in touch! I’ll also post more as updates occur. Luderitz Disability Network This is one which is particularly exciting to me. Roughly 3 weeks back, I met a community activist who was especially interested in disability issues in Luderitz and the surrounding regions. Not only that, but his intimate knowledge of the creation and management of non-profits was especially impressive to me. Currently, he and his colleagues are working to create a new organization, the Luderitz Disability Network, to address these issues in a more robust and holistic manner. Though I don’t have much experience in the area of disabilities, I do have nearly 6 years of work in non-profit fields, so I’m assisting in setting the framework for this organization: the creation of the constitution, membership, and management strategies. The individuals supporting this group are simply amazing, and I really think this will be one of the most successful new non-profits in the region given a couple of years. Youth Work Experience Program This idea is very much in an incubating stage so far, but the early results of my needs assessment indicate a huge demand for youth work opportunities and training. My hope is to create some kind of partnership with local businesses and organizations to create such opportunities for youth, and also to identify a way to sustain the program. We have a large hall in the Youth Center, useful for film screenings, dances, and other activities. My early idea is to create a bi-monthly entertainment night, featuring local talent, movies, dances, or other community events offered free of charge, and to have youth work as managers of the event and also to sell food and beverages to maintain the cost of the event, and also to put a little money in their pockets. In addition, the youth in the program could receive computer training (already available at the ministry) and resume and interview training to help them find more permanent positions. Again, this is just a very early idea at this point, but after more consultation with ministry employees, businesses, and community leaders, my hope is to see something like this begin to take form. My Zone Previous volunteers worked with a group called “My Zone” in Luderitz, which was essentially a group of young adults who would spread the word on various health issues, run workshops on a variety of topics, and otherwise offer volunteer services to the city as needed. Unfortunately, the group has not been very active for some time, but there has been interest expressed to get it going again. Special Olympics My first week, I was approached by a woman who had done extensive work with a Special Olympics program in Luderitz. We have been meeting every few weeks since then, and our goal is to get the program started again within a few months – offering training in athletics and soccer to individuals in the program. Currently, we have secured a practice field, but we aim to gain access to an indoor facility to better ensure safety, as the wind in Luderitz combined with the heavy sand is not always a good combination for your face and lungs! Ministry of Health Collaboration Since I’m technically a health volunteer, it only makes sense that I work with these guys! I’ve met 2 social workers at the Luderitz Ministry of Health, and I have been incredibly impressed with their work ethic, their spirit, and their goals for the city and region. Next week, I will be participating with them in a Week of Activism Against Substance Abuse project. This will be our first official collaboration, but our goal is to take this week of activism and build it into something much bigger. In fact, the goal of our first 2 days of activism is to approach local schools to encourage students to join our new and improved TADAH (Teenagers Against Drug Abuse and HIV/AIDS) group. Once we have created this new group, with sub-groups at each of the secondary and primary schools, we will be able to pursue new projects which directly involve the youth, providing them with new knowledge as well as a platform for them to share their energy and creativity with the city at large. Collaborations with Schools in the US One of the biggest goals of the Peace Corps is to encourage interaction with individuals in the US and sponsor countries. Currently, I’ve begun projects between 2 US schools – one in Utah, and one in Florida, and by August we will begin communication between these schools and schools here in Luderitz. I can’t say exactly where these interactions will lead, but I’m hoping that the creativity of the youth involved on each side will result in something really spectacular! I’m also open to working with other schools, so if you’re interested in working with me please get in touch! ………………………………………………………………………………………. These are the early project candidates, but with 2 more years to go, I’m sure new and exciting things will emerge! Until then, we’ll all keep busy and keep smiling.  Recently I’ve had a few friends and family ask, “what projects are you working on at the moment?” This can be a little bit difficult to answer, because in their minds I’m likely working with kids in a classroom, or doing something at a health facility, or any number of things we first imagine when we envision overseas volunteers. But I’m not really doing any of those things, yet. But I’ve been in Luderitz for 1 month, and Namibia for 3, so what on earth have I been doing with all this time? Why have I not been working on any projects yet?
The answer: I am! Just, not exactly in the way you’d think. One of the top priorities the Peace Corps has had since its inception is sustainability. Sustainability is one of these fun buzz words we like to throw around, but let’s take a second to imagine what exactly that means. Sustainability doesn’t mean sending a new volunteer every 2 years to take over the responsibilities of a previous volunteer ad infinitum. Imports of any kind, whether material or professional, are inherently a dependency, and dependency is detrimental to the long-term self-sufficiency of anything. Instead, volunteers want to work so that, in the future, their presence will be entirely unnecessary. This means projects need to not only be well thought out, but that volunteers must also tap into the passions and demands of the people living and working in their site, to ensure as much as possible that projects will continue, and continue effectively, well after the volunteer leaves. The Peace Corps starts its volunteers on this path through the creation of a needs assessment. A needs assessment is a comprehensive analysis of the volunteer’s community – the strengths, weaknesses, demands, resources, and other capacities of the community in which we live and work. As you can see, calling it a “needs assessment” is in some ways is a misnomer. For example, a Secondary School with which I’m hoping to work closely has already created a very vibrant boys group for students 13-18. This is something the community has identified as a need, and talented and passionate individuals have already been identified to manage and develop the program. A boys group at this school is obviously no longer a need – it’s an asset. It is still very likely that I will work with this group and support their activities, however, but I will not be building a project from the ground up and addressing a need. Instead, my focus with this particular group will be capacity building – what skills, training, or resources can I provide to help this group be even better? Or, if I don’t have the skills, training, or resources they need, do I have the ability to connect them with people or organizations that do? It’s important to note as well that the needs assessment must be a collaborative creation. While my personal perceptions and reflections on Luderitz are certainly important in my work here (and, obviously, unavoidable) it is far more important to integrate the broad needs, desires, feelings, and perceptions of the community at large into my work. The go-it-alone approach could perhaps yield a few positive results, but will ultimately do more harm than good, and would be anything but sustainable. I’m now roughly a month into my community integration and needs assessment, which I’m calling the Luderitz Youth Listening Tour. The basic idea is this – to have direct conversations with a variety of key stakeholders, including parents, teachers, pastors, community professionals and activists, and students themselves in order to gain a broad understanding of available programs and resources, demands, and community passions. In addition to my own conversations and notes with these stakeholders, I have also created a brief anonymous survey to document what, exactly, the community perceives as its strengths, demands, needs and wants. These conversations, interviews, and surveys will provide the qualitative dimension of my assessment. From the quantitative side, I will be working primarily with the Ministry of Health, but also the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Gender and Child Welfare, to better understand the quantitative dimensions of the city’s problems – including figures like individuals living with HIV/AIDS, the number of orphans and vulnerable children, and so forth. Ultimately, combining these details should give me a pretty solid understanding of the situation in Luderitz, and will give me a good footing from which to get started. Already, I’ve found a few very promising projects, and have begun some low-level work with a variety of groups and ministries. By the end of my service, my hope is that these early relationships will become something much stronger, and that a small, but lasting impact will be made by my time and collaboration here. My needs assessment will be completed by the end of July, and I plan on posting a PDF copy of it here for anyone interested in reading. On that note as well – I would also be grateful for anyone willing to proofread the final version before that time. Please get in touch with me and we’ll make it happen!  Caught between caustic visions
of scarcity and abundance - of soul, ephemerons Some, bold, walk the earth as if it were water, Promethean Fire roaring from the calderas of their hearts bringing all that it touches to boil. Others, defeated, walk the earth as if it were their grave and nothing more - as if they were ghosts and nothing more - as if this life were a play of shadows. Tonight I write for the ghosts, for the shadows: Burn this poem should it kindle your fire.  Love across oceans of dust and waves –
Dust and waves, a lifelong ode to that summer when our lives were no longer our own A summer gamble once paid for nightly on an altar of stained and tangled sheets Now paid in the swollen and aching memories of our strained and tired hearts  Well everyone, for the first time since starting this blog I can say, officially, that I am now a United States Peace Corps Volunteer. The first two months of training have flown by, and while I will miss my new friends as much as I miss my dear friends and loved ones back home, I can honestly say that I am happy to be starting my new life and work in Luderitz.
But first, I must say that the swearing in ceremony was among the happiest moments in my life. It was incredibly surreal – we were surrounded by incredible Namibian and American people, all of whom were there to celebrate our work and our futures. All of whom were and are pulling for us to succeed, and all of whom are ready to put everything they are on the line to work with us toward a better future for the world. I have never been more proud to be an American or to be a human being than in that moment. The atmosphere held within it a different spirit – a spirit of togetherness, of love, of hope, comparable to few things I have seen before. I must also say how truly blessed I feel to be a part of Peace Corps Namibia Group 39. We have spent almost every waking hour of the past 2 and a half months together, and I say with sincerity that they are not my friends but my family. We have seen each other in every state of emotion, in every state of energy, restlessness, or exhaustion, and we have worked together and trained together on a range of topics. But most importantly, we have learned together. We have played together. We have laughed together. And now, though we will be separated by hundreds of miles, we will work together also. And I know that we are working in the same heart and mind, and that together we will accomplish incredible things. I don’t know what more to say at the moment other than that I am happy. Luderitz is home. Namibia is home. And I hope to share my home with each and every one of you. Khalil Gibran has said that “Work is love made visible.” I am ready now for my work.  People say:
“I wish I could take what I know now and use it when I was younger.” The trick is becoming younger tomorrow. 1
Almond colored grasses (like your eyes) Sprouting blossoms in fragments A touch of pink – here A streak of orange – there Visible only in transcendent twilight Beauty complex and subtle Beauty I haven’t seen since Beauty I haven’t seen since I detached from your almond eyes and didn’t look back. Beauty I tried to recreate in the shifting sand - A touch of pink – here A streak of orange – there But the road from St. Augustine Has been covered in tears of love of joy of fear of love again Tears I didn’t show you out of love of joy of fear of love again Tears that fell as soon as I detached from your almond eyes and didn’t look back. 2 I know your tears are rolling now Because I know your tears better than I know my own. I know your tears are not tears. Your tears – of love of joy of fear of love again – Are the aquifer of my spirit’s well. My wellspring was full in the last moment our eyes locked, So you may see my tears on the road from St. Augustine, You may see my tears Falling from the lacustrine sky, You may see my tears, But my tears are not your tears, And when we meet again we must nourish the desert. So hold your tears for me until our first desert dance – Hold your tears so we may paint the desert sands – And Hold your tears for the almond grasses Sprouting blossoms in fragments In your almond eyes.  100 years ago, the first diamond in the south of Namibia was discovered near Luderitz by Zacharias Lewala. 100 years later, I’ll be heading there to find other diamonds.
Yesterday, we received our site placements for Peace Corps. And in one of those freak moments that only an odd and entertaining universe like ours can produce, I ended up exactly where I guessed I would go: Luderitz. When I first learned I was going to Namibia, Luderitz was the first city I learned about after the capitol, Windhoek. I immediately saw myself there – on the coast, by the bay, an ocean of water on one side and an ocean of sand on the other. I often find myself in worlds wedged between worlds. As I read the site description and my job description, I couldn’t believe how perfect it all sounded. Luderitz is isolated, but it is an oasis, fueled by diamond mining, seafood, and light industry, it is a city situated in the midst of a massive expanse of sand and rock – if you look at it from google earth, I doubt you’ll be able to believe that anyone lives there. In fact, the entire Karas region in Namibia’s south is among the least densely populated areas in the world. It is something like ¾ the size of Utah, yet hosts a mere 76,000 people – 13,000 of whom live in Luderitz. This works out to just under .5 people per square kilometer. To many this might sound anything but ideal, but I’ve always had a certain romance with the desert. Drought, distance, dryness, dust, and yet, in the midst of it all: life, seemingly sustained only by the lacustrine sky. The sun exaggerates her paintings in the desert, and the wind recreates the landscape at its whim. And with the rains come recrudescence. I can hardly wait for all of this, and yet, there’s also sadness with any impending change. Over the past month, I’ve built some very strong friendships with the other Group 39ers, which I think we can objectively say is the best group of Peace Corps Namibia volunteers in history. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but in truth I feel this way. We’ve been very supportive of each other in a lot of ways, and now, we have only one month left with each other. Fortunately though, I think our ties will remain strong – and on the positive side, we now know we have friends all over the country to crash with when we travel! I don’t want to write much more about Luderitz, as I’m trying my hardest not to create too many expectations until I’ve actually been there. The first 3 months of our placement we are advised to take things very slow, and I plan on it. My priorities will be in building relationships and ensuring that I’ve got my Afrikaans down in a solid way, and finding passionate youth leaders who can turn our projects into something powerful and sustainable. But I will say that I am inspired by my new home and my new job. I will say that I expect to be challenged. And I will say that I hope to overcome these challenges, to collaborate with many of you, and with many counterparts in Namibia. And I will say that I hope to make you all proud.  Sometimes you get a question so good it requires its own blog.
Today, my dear friend Alana asked: Since the Peace Corps is focused on public health, and you’re not trained as a medical professional, what are the expectations concerning that part of the job? Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was the very first question I thought myself when I received my placement as a public health volunteer. I imagined myself in some clinic in the middle of a desert giving vaccinations and pills to whoever came in and asked for them, and having people of all ages coming to me for medical advice on a range of topics. Needless to say, these thoughts were pretty disquieting, as these are all things I am WOEFULLY unqualified to perform. And 3 months of training in-country isn’t exactly equivalent to individuals who have spent years, if not decades, studying these very things. So… I decided to learn more. Fortunately, my job as a public health volunteer is not at all on the clinical side. In fact, I am expressly forbidden from performing any of the above tasks (phew). My actual day-to-day work can be described more as something of a liaison or informant. In brief, this means that the Peace Corps’ goal in terms of Public Health is more focused on teaching skills and giving information, especially to individuals who live in areas where these services are not readily available. At the top of these public health priorities, in Namibia and many other countries, is combatting the HIV/AIDs epidemic. In fact, the full title of our project is the Community Health and HIV/AIDs Project (CHHAP). In this project, there are 3 main pillars: HIV Prevention, Care and Support Services for those living with HIV/AIDs, and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health. As you can imagine, these 3 pillars allow for a pretty broad range of activities for a public health volunteer. On one end of the spectrum, we have one of the primary activities people imagine when they think about the Peace Corps: teaching the proper and consistent use of things like condoms to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Useful, yes, but maybe not so fun to blog about! On the other end, though, are things like Youth mentoring, creating after school programs, and training individuals to maintain such programs. In the middle you can find any number of things, from offering referral services for people living with HIV, to assisting as a case manager for local medical professionals. To be blunt, I will work primarily in a supporting role for Namibia’s real health professionals. It is also important to note that the Peace Corps has 4 basic signposts for any project undertaken by a public health volunteer. These are as follows: · Do no Harm · Respect for Individuals · Non-discrimination · Participation These are pretty self-explanatory, but in my own mind the key signpost can be found in participation. Though I feel there are a great deal of things I can accomplish in two years, the ultimate goal isn’t for me to have a nice paragraph on my resume. To succeed as a volunteer, I need to assist in the proliferation of real and useful skills to individuals who otherwise may not have learned them, and to assist locals in creating and maintaining programs that they actually want to have. This is why I struggled to tell people exactly what I would be doing before I came here – as an outsider, it is foolhardy and unproductive for me to project needs or wants onto a community I know nothing about. In fact, it could go against the first signpost to Do No Harm, as I may be forcing something on a community that doesn’t want what I have to offer. In the end, openness and collaboration will determine whether my 2 years here will be useful. I hope this answers the questions adequately – if not, ask me more! Also – do stay tuned as tomorrow I’ll be uploading a fun video (and teaching you all a little Afrikaans!) provided my internet connection stays strong. More soon!  Hello everyone! My apologies for my hiatus recently. As you can imagine, travelling a long distance and trying to adapt to a new home can be pretty challenging, and honestly it has been nice NOT to be looking at screens all the time lately! That being said, I want to document this experience well, and also give my friends and family and others who are interested a good taste of what we’re experiencing here. And so, the blog officially begins. I hope to keep these fairly brief, but informative, but more importantly I hope to answer any questions you may have. So please, feel free to leave comments here or drop me an e-mail, and I will reply as promptly as possible.
Before we start, though, there are a few technical things to get out of the way. While the Peace Corps and the U.S. Government encourage us to do things like blog and use social media as a way of accomplishing the goal of building bridges between the U.S. and host countries, they also want it to be clear that, while we are employed by the government, we are not necessarily their official mouthpieces. So, to be clear: any opinions or ideas expressed within this blog are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the ideals, policies, or opinions of the Peace Corps or the United States Government. With that out of the way, here’s the fun stuff: We are only about a week into training, and I can honestly say I have never had so much information tossed my way as I have over the past week – and things are only just beginning! As trainees, there are a lot of things we have to cover: what we will be doing as public health volunteers, safety and personal health maintenance, Peace Corps policies and expectations, Namibian history and culture, our goals and responsibilities as volunteers, language and cross-cultural training, and so on. We also sing often, and are learning important things like the Namibian national anthem as well as the anthem of the African Union. I also sincerely doubt there are many jobs which use more acronyms than the Peace Corps. I feel as though if I know half of them by the end of my service I will probably be in the top end of the bell curve. If that paragraph seemed broad, generalized, and disjointed, then I feel I have succeeded in giving you an idea of what we feel like sometimes as trainees. Our training is VERY comprehensive – and on any given day we can talk about one, a few, or all of the abovementioned things over the course of 8-12 hours. This isn’t to say that our trainers are doing a bad job. In fact, their work has been among the most professional and intelligently presented I have ever seen. It merely means this: we are jumping in to a very difficult, but incredibly rewarding field of work, and our success or failure depends heavily on how prepared we are to handle a very ambiguous and nuanced job environment. These trainings seem like mini-marathons in themselves because they are preparing us for a greater marathon – our 2 year service here in Namibia. That will do it for these very early thoughts – but I want to know: what are your questions about this experience so far? In subsequent blogs, I plan to narrow things down to very particular subjects, and make them as useful to everyone back home as possible. Shortly, I will also attempt to incorporate video into these things! Until then, please keep sending me messages, sharing your stories back home, and working in the small ways to build bridges between people. That’s what this journey is all about! Is there a word to describe a woman,
Whose eyes are a keyhole to a vault of stars? Whose hair is the crash of leaves in an endless autumn? Whose lips whisper poetry to God’s own ears? Perhaps the words don’t come to mind, Because to see her is to forget her name. I think the greatest struggle I’ve had these past few years has been in learning that I can be happy without you. It’s no insult, for surely I was happy before we were together, but your presence filled me with a happiness I had never truly known, and one on which I have come to rely. And now, each mile, each hour, each pen-stroke I make without you exponentially increases my longing – so much so that each passing day can come to feel no different than the last. I get drawn into an in-between world where there is only past – no present or future.
Only recently do I feel I’ve overcome this. It hasn’t come from letting you go – God knows that each passing second I fill with thoughts of us together again. But it has come in finding the same grace of your touch, your smile, your heart, in the little things that fill my days without you. I wander into bookstores a lot – our cathedrals. I see a book we’ve both read, or an author you love and I smile. I see a couple holding hands, gazing at the seemingly endless towers of secondhand books and I feel your hand in mine. There are few things on this earth like your hands – small and precious and beautiful, yet the torrent of spirit that spills from them daily leaves me paralyzed by joy. When I leave the bookstore and can’t help but wonder if I’m actually walking into a world that you’ve created – that your hands have created. The oils of your fingertips made the watercolors of this city by the bay. Your eyes crafted the fertile soil and the redwoods. Even the sunset here is your recycled garment, and as it fades across the Pacific I can see you waking on the other side of the world, wrapping it around your frame. I walk home, and only now does the vastness of your love truly strike me – there’s no need to be happy without you. In this world you’ve crafted, there is no “without you.” 
I’m now less than two months away from the beginning of my Peace Corps service in Namibia. Even with all I’ve done so far to prepare, it’s impossible for me to truly put this reality into perspective, whether for the interested reader or simply for myself. My feelings are a mixed bag in many ways to say the least – the more I learn about Namibia and its people, the more excited I am to meet my future friends and colleagues. But this is of course tempered by the emptiness I sometimes feel – the feelings that arise when I imagine what I may be missing.
And there is no shortage on what I’ll be missing. Imagine – 2 years away from everything you’ve ever known. No basketball at Chapel Park. No game nights that last into the earliest hours of morning. No karaoke with friends who have grown both incrementally crazier and more heroic with each passing year. I will miss Natalie’s graduation – potentially 2 graduations – and will postpone our marriage for over 2 years. My campouts and hikes will be under an unfamiliar sky. And the physical separation from those I love most will be greater than it has ever been in our lifetimes. And yet, as I write this to you now, I write with only feelings of peace. This peace comes from no strength of my own. Rather, it is from the miracle and blessing of those very people and places that I will miss the most. Not a day goes by where I do not marvel over the incredible adventure my life has been up to this point, and of the incredible support and guidance I have received over the years. Without fail, the people I have needed most have appeared to me, and through their kindness and friendship I have always come out a little stronger. I have come to feel that our lives, our dreams, our stories have become extensions of one another – that we are each other’s limbs and hearts – and that together our light can encompass the earth. And so I leave the nest, but with wings nourished and made strong by those who have made this soil home. Hearts who have made this flight possible. Minds who have challenged me and challenge me, and push me ever onward into the sky. And with them under wing – with that spirit as the wind at my back – where there was once fear there is only love. Where there was once uncertainty there is only love. Where there was regret or sadness or doubt or anxiety there is only love. Earlier I wrote that I will sleep under an unfamiliar sky, but this is false. There is only one sky, by definition a familiar sky, and family is its root. That is what this journey is about. That is what all journeys are about – flying together – one family – one story. And I am humbled to fly with you. Below is an article I wrote which originally appeared in "Ella's Voice," the blog of the Ella Baker Center, a prominent West Oakland human rights organization. The original article can be found here, and was published on July 17, 2013.
Last December, I wrote an article for the Street Spirit, a local newspaper on homelessness, on Miss Hayok Kay – a homeless shopping cart recycler and the empress of the forthcoming documentary Dogtown Redemption. The article was well received, and triggered a rollercoaster of wonderful and difficult news in the months that followed. Shortly after the article was published, I was contacted by a social service worker at the St. Mary’s Center in Oakland. She was moved by Miss Kay’s story and offered to review her case and explore her staying at the shelter. To our collective delight, Miss Kay was approved stay at St. Mary’s after only a few short interviews. For us, this was a major breakthrough, if only for the fact that we could rest knowing Miss Kay was somewhere safe and warm for the night. But more important, she was eager to go, and even worked on small volunteer projects for the shelter. Better still, the shelter allowed Miss Kay to retain her freedom, and offered myriad opportunities for personal growth, healing, and community. One such event was a memorial held at the St. Mary’s Center. The event eulogized homeless individuals who had died on the street in previous years. Those who attended were each given a single flower – a symbol of the memory of those they had lost. At the end of the service, dozens gathered in a circle, saying the names of those they had lost while tossing their flower into the center of the circle. The chorus chimed: “Beloved, we are here.” Miss Kay dedicated her flower to her beloved – the artist Fred Griffing. But as she shouted his name, other attendees had sounded tributes to their own beloveds, and Hayok’s tiny voice was drowned out. As the event came to a close and the others left, Miss Kay remained in her chair crying. As the memories of her love flooded back, Miss Kay was again reminded of her history of impermanence – how more often than not the things she cherishes most are torn from her. How previous loves, old friends, and even her own family had removed themselves from her life. How her years on the street had made her almost invisible – a shadow of a life in transit between this world and the next. Only a few feet away, my first reaction was to rush in and hug her. To tell her she was still loved. To remind her that she was still worth something, that her and Fred’s story was worth something, and that we, at the very least, would never forget. But I stayed myself – she was on camera. A rush to hug her would ruin an otherwise intimate shot. Funny, how in that moment the very tool we used to tell her story was the same one that made her untouchable. Filming done, the moment passed, I hugged her anyway, even though we both knew it was less genuine than it would have been even a few seconds earlier. She offered a practiced smile that said “I’m okay, really” – more for my sake than hers, I thought. The day’s work done, we left together to eat lunch and catch up. Not long after that day, another bout of depression and drinking took the better of Miss Kay, and she was unable to continue her stay at St. Mary’s. The fact that the worst of the winter was over was only a small reprise. An all too familiar question hung over us all: What now? The truth is plainly that we don’t know. As filmmakers and as friends, we do our best to help in what ways we can while remaining true to the story we are telling. Through these rollercoasters, we’ve learned tremendously about extreme poverty and homelessness. We’ve seen what works and what doesn’t, and the many gray areas in between. Still, at the end of the day we are not necessarily the ones who will have all the answers. What we can offer, however, is some insight into the holes in our systems, and work to encourage dialogue and action in mending them. These wounds are not the recyclers’ or ours to bear alone – they are community wounds, and it will take a community to heal them. This is our redemption, and why I believe so strongly in the message of Dogtown Redemption. Recyclers like Miss Kay are not voiceless – they have only lacked a conduit to make their voices heard. We are not their voices. We are merely letting them speak. But we need your support to bring the film to a close. Our deadline to finish is mid-September: in time to apply for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival – an opportunity to bring the conversation on poverty to a national audience. To help us reach our goal, we have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help us raise the funds necessary to finish the film. The biggest hurdle here is postproduction – editing over 200 hours of footage into an 80 minute feature. Over the years, we have received grants from the Sundance Documentary Film Fund, Cal Humanities, and others, and the gracious support of many friends. We just need one more push to get us across the finish line – to shatter the stereotypes of the poor, and bring a 5-year marathon to a successful conclusion. We can’t do this without you – and so we put our film and our faith in your hands.  For far too long now, I’ve kept myself from writing anything of any real controversy or value. Whether in terms of philosophy, politics, poetry or other commentary, I have often felt the urge to say something, only to later “think better” of it. The primary reason for this is simple: before I put pen to paper, I can already see the flaws, the shortcomings, and the missing pieces of my own arguments. Try as I might to reduce the idea to something which makes sense, I instead only manage to find an irreducible and, by definition, unanswerable question. And so I remain silent.
Yet, everywhere I look others are spouting ideas. Many of these are good ones, in spite of their flaws, though others I find so awful to be nearly inexcusable. Whether their authors notice their flaws or not I am uncertain—if they do, it’s a hindrance they clearly surmount in favor of expressing an imperfect, yet useful idea. If they don’t, it’s usually due to an ignorance which is more than apparent in the resulting manuscript. Even now, I hesitate to have written the previous sentence—not necessarily because I think it untrue, but rather that it seems to suggest I am not ignorant. Try as I might, I must submit that there are much more things I am unaware of than I am aware of, and this is a fact which will remain true so long as I am alive. But with that said, I believe now that at the very least I must participate. If the greatest philosophers and polymaths, both ancient and contemporary, could make mistakes at an epic scale, surely I can reserve the right to be wrong or bewildered. My writings are not a fount of truth—rather, they are true only insofar as they represent how I truly understand and relate to the world. The contents of this website, then, will reflect my attempts to allay my own bewilderment, and perhaps in the process I will help someone else do the same. I invite my readers to participate with me as well—in the spirit of dialogue, in the spirit of learning, and in the spirit of wrongness—with the hope that it will one day lead us to something right. |
