Barefoot in the Mud

dont' wathcu soyentl green it ai sa bd movie. losts oyojrf sexism stnoistn. booyah.

Can I just say that I am ridiculously excited that the flowers Hassan and I planted last fall are starting to bloom?








And of course spring means the bugs are out too:




Also, did I mention that I love playing with Hassan's fancy camera?

Hi! I am still alive! You might be wondering what has kept me busy enough to keep me away from livejournal! Ok, so you all know that I am just really lazy when it comes to livejournal. Anyway, here is what I have been up to:

• School. I am still plugging away at my Phd. I still have second thoughts about it sometimes, but I am mostly happy with it. I get particularly excited about teaching--the research aspect not so much. I think it is just harder for me to envision. I am taking a class on feminist pedagogy this semester--more of a workshop than class--where we have to develop syllabi for Intro to Women's Studies. It is incredibly difficult, but also kind of fun. And the semester is winding down (this was technically the last week of classes although I have one more next week anyway). So now I just need to write 3 papers!
• Etsy. At one point in the semester I wanted to drop out of school and open my own Etsy shop. I stayed in school, but I opened Elephunk's Trunk anway, where I have been selling my handmade hats, coin purses, fascinators, and whatever else I feel like making. So far I have sold 10 things! Making things and getting them listed has occupied much of my non-school time.
• Blogging. Just not here on livejournal because I am a bad friend. I've been keeping a craft blog as part of my new Etsy obsession. Mostly I've been writing about etsy related things, other shops I like and whatnot. But I also post pictures of the progresss I'm making on my wedding dress there. Hassan has strict orders not to look at that blog, so it is a place I can post pictures that he won't see.
• Wedding. Which brings us to the final thing taking up all my time lately. The wedding will be at the end of July. Because of items 1-3 on this list (mostly item 1) we are a bit behind. We had hoped to get invitations out by the middle of this month and we still haven't done that. We have started making the paper for the invitations, and we have made the stencils and figured out how to work Hassan's new airbrush. So we are making progress, but it is slow going.

I'm hyphenating my name. That's right. I am officially going to be Celeste Mary Bocchicchio-Chaudhri. Because, you know, my name wasn't long enough. It wasn't hard enough to pronounce, and it certainly wasn't hard enough to spell. I'm gaining only 2 new letters out of it though, the u and the d. We're throwing in another ch for good measure, because clearly, my name needed one more ch.

But seriously, we've been bandying about ideas about surnames for months now and while Bocchicchio-Chaudhri is clunky and a bit ridiculous its the only thing that fits what we want in a name. Its a name we can share without severing our obvious ties to our families of birth. We bandied about ideas like Bochaudhri and Chauchicchio and Bochaucchio, but really, those are all still impossible for the uninitiated to deal with. And I wanted to stay a Bocchicchio and he wanted to stay a Chaudhri but we both wanted to share a name. So hypehnating it is!




*I apologize in advance to my unborn children

Look at the rest of the entry for details of the options red, orange, brown blue, green, straw black, mosaic, straw silver, blue, lavender blue, mosaic, silver
I am trying to decide what colors to make my dress, and you lucky people get to help me make up my mind!

Option one:

 

The red I am thinking of is not actually that pink, but this is the image from the fabric seller's website. The actual fabric is a blood red. This was my original plan, but I am thinking it might be two fallish for a July wedding.

Option two:

 

This one would let me use a bunch of peacock feathers in my accessorizing which is always fun.

Option three:

 

Option four:


Option Five:

This is the current favorite, which was developed after long discussions with my friend Cyd who is helping me make the dress. The blue is actually a deep sapphire, and the color on the bottom right is turquoise made by weaving the sapphire blue with a teal color.


For reference, this is the inspiration photo for my dress:

And this is where we are having the ceremony and reception:

So here are some more random pics from the trip:

From Daphne Sheldrick's Elephant Orphanage (my birthday trip!!)





From the Wildlife Boardwalk and orphanage near the Nairobi game park:


(yes I am petting a cheetah)

From the Nairobi Game park:

On Sunday we drove around the Nyali area checking up on properties Hassan's father has bought, but not developed, and establishments run by his friends and business relations. Ostensibly the purpose of the trip was to visit the Slave Caves at Shimoni--caves that open into bay and were used by early Arab slave traders to hold slaves before their transport across the Indian Ocean. However, since the drive to Shimoni took about two hours and the caves themselves only took about 15 minutes to tour, I suspect that the Caves were chosen for their proximity to Nyali rather than vice versa. Hassan apologized for a day spent mostly driving, but I enjoyed peering out the van windows and learning to identify banana and papaya trees. We drove for a half hour or so down a bumpy dirt road to get to Shimoni at which point we were accosted by every young man in the area with offers to take us on tours in their little boats to see the dolphins or escort us personally to Wasini Island. The caves themselves were a bit eerie as places that mark the darker sides of human history often are.

Monday Hassan and I took off by ourselves for the morning and afternoon. We took an old beat up taxi with neither seatbelts or dashboard up to the Forest Trails Nature Walk. This park, along with Haller Park (which we visited later in the afternoon) are reclaimed quarry sites--as the Bamburi Cement company depletes the quarries it plants fast growing trees in order to re-establish a top soil and then introduces more longer term flora and animal life. Much of the reclamation is well-established now and walking through it feels like walking in the Pleistocene. I kept expecting dinosaurs. While no prehistoric lizards made an appearance, we did see several green vervets (I think...my monkey identification skills are not so good), a water snake, and and Eland. And lots of little poops made by an unidentified creature.

After our walk we crossed the street to have lunch at the Whitesands beach hotel and play on their beach. We swam in the beautiful ocean and rode a camel named Alex accross the sand. At the hotel we saw several of the same kind of monkey we saw at the park. I asked the hotel guard what kind of monkeys they were. He looked at me and explained very patiently, "There are not kinds of monkeys. There are monkeys and there are baboons. That is a monkey."

Then we headed over to Haller Park, the other side of the reclaimed quarry. Haller Park was made famous by the story of Owen, the orphaned  baby hippopatamus who was rescued and brought to the park where he was promptly adopted by Mzee, a 130-year old tortoise. We saw the hippo and one of his new hippo buddies from accross the lake, and several giant tortoises, one of which was probably Mzee.

( Pictures )

My second winter gone and already I am forgetting what snow feels like beneath my boots. I've been visiting my family for the past week, since I missed Christmas and my birthday gallivanting around Kenya. On Friday night small, light flakes of snow began their absent-minded ambling down from the slate gray skies that hang low on our spirits two-thirds of the year here. Were this spring, it would have been the kind of drizzle that falls persistently but undramatically for days. By Saturday morning there was a foot of snow on the ground, burying the tree stumps my mother uses to mark garden paths until they were only evident by the little peaks of snow rising above the rest. The snow has lingered, deep enough to remain white despite the smog, turning gray and brown only under the wheels of passing cars. Today I walked a mile through it to sit in this coffee shop since my parent's do not have internet access. Here in Kent, almost nobody bothers to shovel their sidewalks, and so I had the nostalgic experience of wading through knee-deep snow--deeper where people shovel their driveways up over the sidewalks--or matching my pass to the uneven steps of strangers as I try to use their pressed-down footprints. Secretly I enjoy the effort of it, and once I purposely fell to feel the softness of the snow and the satisfying wet crunch of it beneath my knees. I am glad I have moved away from this climate, at least for now. The effort of trudging through unshoveled snow ceases to be an adventure after a while, and I can enjoy it now because I know back home my crocuses are sending shoots up toward a sky less prone to oppressive monotonous clouds.

We got up early and trundled down to breakfast before heading out in a van north away from the city toward the Gede ruins. On the way we stopped at a little place called Vapingo where Hassan's parents are planning to build a retirement home. While his father looked at building plans and dealt with other business in the office, Hassan and I walked long the stretch of pristine beach. It is bordered on both sides by cliffs into the ocean, which essentially makes it a private beach for the residents of the Vapingo community. You cannot actually own the beaches in Kenya, but if the stretch of beach is inacessible except by walking through your property it achieves the same effect. I'm glad that you cann't own the beaches and that they are therefore available to local people for fishing or just relaxing even in the areas where tourist hotels have gone up. At the same time, it was nice to walk along the beach without a crowd of people trying to sell us bracelets, or failing that, drugs. Since the Vapingo community is still mostly in the planning stages, the little stretch of beach was completely empty. I found an intact sea urchin shell, and then promptly stepped on it when I got back in the van (oops).

When Hassan's dad had finished his business we got back in the car to drive up to Gede, an old Swahili town that was abandoned sometime in the fourteenth century. Archeologists aren't really sure why the town was abandoned, although conflict with the newly arrived Portuguese and the proxmity of the wells to the toliets are both strong contenders. We had an eccentric tour guide whose explanations of things were, in the words of Hassan's father, "full of masala." "Masala" literally translates as "spice," and while I suspect that Hassan's dad meant it as "full of shit," I like the idea that she spiced up the narrative a bit. Phillip referred to ruins in general as "a series of small walls" which is in fact generally all that remains. Without an entertaining tour guide to bring the history to life, it can be difficult to be enraptured by piles of rubble. While we had to take things she said with a certain grain of salt--I'm pretty sure bats did not carry american sequoia seeds from California to Kenya--most of the historical information she gave us seemed generally plausible. And if she happened to name the monkey's who hung out at the ruins or give us her personal opinion of the Sultan ("According to me, the Sultan was a crafty guy") all the better.

In the middle of the ruins, an NGO benefitting local schools built an observation platform at the top of an 800 year old Baobab tree. For 200 shillings (a little less than $4) you can climp up a rickety staircase built around the trunk of the tree and look out accross the ruins. The stairs are almost ladder steep, and don't look particularly sturdy, but the view is worth it!

( Pictures )

Saturday, December 19th we got up early to go back to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. In order to prevent the total anihilation of the the Chaudhri family, Hassan's father booked us on two separate flights: he, Rehanna, and Phillip went out on the first flight, and Hassan's mother, Hassan, and I went on the next flight out. This way if one plane crashed at least some of the family would survive. Prudent perhaps, but also a bit macabre and highly inconvenient, especially since our flight ended up delayed. Despite Mr. Chaudhri's fears, we all made it safely to Mombasa and spent the afternoon wandering around Old Town and doing some shopping in the rest of the city. Mombasa is a port city on the Indian Ocean dating back to at least the 12th century. It's actually an island just off the coast of mainland Kenya, and is part of the Swahili coast of East Africa. Kenya, like the rest of Africa, is inhabited by several different tribes and ethnic groups. The majority of the people living along the coast are Muslim and speak Swahili.  We stayed in the Mombasa Club, one of dozens of old British gentleman's clubs that dot the post-colonial world. If you are a member of any of them, you can stay at any of them. It is actually summer in Kenya now, and Mombasa was about 90 degrees and humid while we were there.
( pictures )

As promised: the details of my trip to Kenya to spend Christmas with Hassan's family!

On Wednesday, December 16th we woke up early so that I could finish my paper for my Gender Violence, Gender Justice class. I managed to finish it up with enough time to send it off and pack before our afternoon flight. First we flew seven hours to Amsterdam where we had just enough time to grab a sandwich before catching our next eight our flight to Nairobi. We landed about 8:00 on Thursday night and got through the visa lines quickly. Ignoring the throngs of people trying to sell us less than reputable cab rides (they even followed me into the bathroom), we went to the Kenatco booth and hired a taxi to Argwings Codec from which Hassan would direct the driver to his house. He made a little nervous on the way with comments like "I don't remember any of this" and "nothing looks familiar"--a lot has changed in Nairobi in the three years since Hassan had last been there. But as we got closer, his confidence grew and in the end he had no difficulty directing the driver to his parents' house. When we got out of the taxi, his mother, sister, and brother-in-law gave me hugs, which made me feel a lot better about the whole experience.

Friday morning Hassan had to go to the US embassy to renew his visa. His mom took him and his father went off to visit a friend, so I was alone in the house with his sister and brother-in-law. The first thing I did on my first morning in Kenya was to slip and fall and crack my ribs on the side of the tub (literally--when I got home I went for x-rays and it appears that I may have had a minor fraction. It was hard to tell because at that point the injury was already three weeks old). Other than that the morning and afternoon were pretty uneventful. I hung out on the back varandahand explored the garden while Hassan stood in line for umpteen hours at the embassy. Hassan's family lives in a lovely bungalow with gorgeous gardens, and old and unhealthy Alsatian named Odin and a leopard tortoise named Waldo. Hassan and I were still pretty jet-lagged, so we called it an early night in order to get up for our flight to Mombassa the next day!
( Pictures )

I'm back in Atlanta after two weeks in Kenya (where the giraffes are and the zebra). I will post tomorrow with details of the trip but right now I am EXHAUSTED!

You were a pain in the butt, but you were my very first car. I'll never forget you!

We got Woozles spayed and she was chewing on her stitches, so now she gets to wear this:

Because of some very good criticism and suggestions from my readers, i have decided to revise my top ten list of sexual euphemisms:

1.Making Spaghetti
2. Making Spaghetti
3. Making Spaghetti
4. Making Spaghetti
5. Buttering my Britches
6. Making Spaghetti
7. Making Spaghetti
8. Making Spaghetti
9. Making Spaghetti
10. Chinese Chefs

Bernadette told me to give my top-ten euphemisms for sex. And since I'm bored a work, it seems like a perfect time to get on that!

so it goes like this: Comment, and I will assign you a top 5 or top 10 list to provide. Top 10 favorite cheeses, top 5 reasons why Colossus is the greatest of the X-Men, top five time travel movies, whatever. In turn, others may comment and receive lists from you." If you would like a list, please request on in the comments.


These are in no particular order:

1. Boink
2. Horizontal Tango
3. liquid copulation (that means the F-word!)
4. you want to go spelunking in my cave?
5. a little somethin somethin
6. The Beasty Rendezvous
7. chinese chefs!
8. swapping fluids
9. Burping the worm in the mole hole
10. carnal gymnastics

This was really hard in that I kept wanting to just make up random phrases like "butter my britches" but no one ever says that

Hassan and I have been living together for two weeks now! It is grand. We're both working full-time though, so it is taking forever to get the place together. This past weekend we finally finished the living room and got around to taking a few pictures. I'll post pictures of the rest of the house once it is not full of boxes.

( Take the tour! )

Discuss:

"Because we have a common ontological condition as vulnerable, intelligent beings, human happiness is diverse, but misery is common and uniform"*




*Bryan S. Turner, Vulnerability and Human Rights. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. P. 9

Hassan and I went to the Fulton County Animal shelter today and got two lovely kitties! We wanted to get one adult cat because everyone wants kittens and if nobody adopts the full-grown cats their future is pretty bleak. So I picked out a long-haired mostly white but also orange guy who is about two years old. But we also wanted to get a kitten, because, well they are cute and I totally fall into the camp of everyone who wants a kitten. Hassan picked out a little tiny black and white kitten who looks like she will be medium to long haired as well. (My allergies are thrilled). He was almost positive she was the kitten for us, and the she launched herself at the cage door and just clung there mewing, which pretty much cinched the deal. So now they are both home and we shall love them.

( photos! )