keith birthday has norwegian arms

The Cut-Off Ponytail from the Run-Down Everything

This is an article I wrote for the fall issue of JUMP magazine in Philadelphia documenting an experience I had this past may in Ecuador.

I’m probably half delirious.

Fifteen hours of airport the previous day, twelve hours late to our destination – Quito, Ecuador. Fuzzy-headed with the altitudinal change. Five hours of sleep, maybe. Bussed to the edges of town, poverty stricken, we are told. Looks that way.

A small, hot room with some people inside. A man setting up some PA equipment. Dark complexion, middle-aged maybe.

He walks up to us, speaks in Spanish. Our broken skills put it together: he makes instruments. He’s going to go get some right now. He lives next door or something.

He comes back with a black case, pulls out some homemade pan flutes, starts to play. They sound good, as far as I can tell. I don’t know much about pan flutes. We thank him and start getting our things together to begin our workshop.

To clarify our geographical location: the fourth stop of the South American ESLfolk tour. Myself and three others, funded to go to various cities along the Andes and introduce a self-written curriculum/textbook about teaching English through traditional American folk music. This is the first stop where we are being ushered around by the embassy staff. 

Next day, wake up in a gated community, pile into a twelve-passenger van. Drive to the place deemed ‘impoverished’ by the US government, get out. Watch the whole city fly by in between.

(click here to read the rest)

I WENT TO TUVA AND DRANK VODKA WITH NOMADS

Note: A modified version of this article appeared in the Summer issue of JUMP magazine. This is the original.

(photo courtesy of Helen Stuhr-Rommereim [who was also on this trip])

We woke up early, set out early. A long bus ride out into the steppe. We were to meet nomads. Grass and grass and maybe a small hill. The horizon was beset with very tall mountains with snow on the top. The bus was filled with people; four American visitors, one newly arrived Nigerian student, and about twenty local students. We had already started to drink cheap local beer out of two liter plastic bottles. The boys in the back had started to sing. The professors in the front shook their heads, probably thinking fondly of their youth or something.

 Take a map of Asia and find the geographical center. According to the natives, this is where Tuva is. The south of Russia, in the center, technically Siberia, on the border with Mongolia. Most of the buildings looked like Russia, all of the people looked central Asian. We had started in Kyzyl, the capital, and were heading out towards the mountains, beyond some small nameless village we stopped in for various foodstuffs.

 I had been in Russia for about seven months at this point, had taken this trip under the guise of working in the university and ‘spreading goodwill’ on behalf of the Fulbright program, but mostly because I had recently emerged from a period of serious purposeful solitude. Being around fellow Americans stationed in various Siberian cities felt good. I had felt pretty awful for months already. Also Tuva is where throat singing is from.

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It’s possible the rapture happened yesterday

Walking past a bus of Carmen sandiegos I realize I have misplaced my wallet and in it are some things that I should not be attached to

I wait to be unnaturally pushed I am bussed from one pusher to another. I identify with a screaming child. I identify with a dancing child. I do not identify with the flashing lights of a child’s toy. The child may/may not agree.

Three airports one day thirteen hours and only two where I feel nervous. Three hours in queue awaiting documents and/or stamps.

Gated embassy digs like menifee
Like a tahoe lodge
Like purgatory
Like ______.

another not so legit excerpt from email update

well, actually im in naples, italy at the moment. I am also going to
apologize in advance for not using apostrophes because its too
complicated on this keyboard. Anyways

I have been eating a lot of pizza because it is super cheap and super
delicious. i am also enjoying the fact that italians eat cookies for
breakfast, its like a childhood dream come true. ive been staying with
my friend ilaria who i know from tomsk and shes been showing me around
and its been awesome. we went to pompeii yesterday and it was another
dream come true. her roommates have also been forcing me to learn
italian. its not so hard, they make me say silly things, and then
congratulate me. its a pretty supportive system. im a fan.

also, i like the italian way of hanging out. everyone sort of just
converges at the currently hip square and just talks a whole lot and
gets drunk. of course the people that live on this square absolutely
hate it. luckily the trend shifts every six months to a year or so.
people dont really seem to do clubs or bars here. at least not the
students. apparently they dont have the money for it.

in the next couple days im going to go on an official sight seeing
tour of naples (today) and then to sorrento tomorrow. i leave thursday
for berlin for another two days, where ill get to see some more
friends and prepare myself for reentry to russia. its been nice not
being there, but my multiple entry visa clearly states that i cant
spend more than two weeks outside of the country.

technically my actual going places vacation is until the 26th, when
all of us fulbrighters meet up in moscow to have a midyear seminar.
that means we go to silly meetings at the embassy all day and then get
really drunk at night. but ill be spending two days beforehand in st.
petersburg with a smaller group of fulbrighters, the ones i get along
with most, who oddly also happen to mostly consist of those who live
closest to me in russia. i guess were the siberian elite or something.
then well take a night train to moscow, have our silly meetings and
then the plan is for a few of the siberian elites to take the train
back with me to tomsk (basically on the way for them), stay a few days
there, and then ill remain in tomsk until the beginning of the
semester (mid feb) and theyll head on back to their towns. then most
of my foreign friends will leave for home on the 10th or 11th, and
that will be pretty sad. at least in the meantime ive gathered up
enough russian friends to not have a steep drop off slash be suddenly
lonely.