15 minutes

Today I was given 15 minutes to clear off my desk.  The guards I used to say hi to in the morning put my things onto a security belt and had me step through a metal detector.  It didn’t matter that I walked through these doors for 3 years.  I no longer worked here; USAID no longer existed here.  I had exactly 15 minutes to take down my awards, pack the art I collected from Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa.  To grab my USAID mug and collect the blanket I kept at my desk when my biggest problem was that it was always too damn cold.  I took pictures of my white board that listed our clinical trials and (with color coding and exclamation points of course) showed their status: Enrolling patients! Follow up data collection!  Close out!  Someone made it into the lactation room to collect the pictures of USAID babies that hung on the walls who had “graduated” from their mom pumping.  When I walked out of the building with my bulging suitcase a large crowd cheered loudly for me, holding banners that said, “USAID’s work mattered, YOUR work mattered.”  My husband held my baby and took pictures of me to mark this sad, fucked up, but important day to remember. 

Today would have been my last day of maternity leave. On Monday I would have gone back to work to the invariable thousands of emails in my inbox.  (I had a whole plan for going through these emails, it involved espresso and Chappel Roan.)  I would have gone back to my little desk with my packed coffee (because USAID didn't even use our funds for office coffee) and my 8am calls with South Africa.  Back to the Zoom calls where we planned with pharmaceutical companies how to make longer lasting HIV prevention products for women.  Back to that delicious roast beef sandwich from the place next door that I would eat at my desk during my lunch half-an-hour so I could listen to webinars on how to increase project localization in the countries we worked in.

Maternity leave was wonderful.  I loved getting to know the little human that came out of me.  Her smile is the only thing getting me through these dark days.  But I was excited to get back to what was not just another desk job.  Our work was meaningful, and my life felt more meaningful from doing it.

I’m sitting at the desk in my home office right now drinking tea from my USAID mug.  The baby is napping.  My husband starts his paternity leave on Monday, and I don’t get to go back to work.  I’m trying to reframe this next chapter for myself as an “opportunity”.  An opportunity to write more, exercise more, take a class, apply to jobs.  But I just want to get back to work.

My new friend and neighbor texted me today: “Everything you’ve done so far for the world is so important and valued by so many people.  These fuckers don’t know what they’re doing messing with people like us.  We’re not just going to give up.  Next stage is a new type of figure it the fuck out and help the world.  Happy to have you as a neighbor and looking forward to plotting, planning and raging with you.” 

Oh girl, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands now.  Just wait and see how I can fight.

I'm mourning

He killed my post partum peace

And now I’m mourning

I’m mourning 3am tik tok cats now rage Signal chats

I’m mourning mom group day care reccs, now who lost a job, lost a house, lost a right

I’m mourning the job I loved, the work that mattered, drawn and quartered

I’m mourning my body, again my own, now owned by the white men with the laws, the guns, the power

I’m mourning my post partum peace

Why can’t I think about how to move to a better school district not how to raise my baby in another fucking country

I am mourning the mother I was on January 19^th

  

This is happening

There’s a giddiness that comes when standing at the precipice.  I remember a similar feeling waiting in line to buy gallons of water in preparation for hurricanes in Key West.  Strangers would turn to each other and compare preparation status.  “My shutters are up but I still have to buy the sandbags.”  “They have them on sale at Home Depot.”  It was terrifying but thrilling.  I felt a similar community feeling during COVID.  It was so scary but also a little exciting.  The whole world was watching the same channel and cheering their health workers from the windows.

USAID went dark today.  There’s no website, we don’t have access to our buildings, most of my colleagues were fired.  I’m waiting for my termination notice any second now.  And again, there’s a little spark of electricity.  I’m on signal chats where people who made it into the building are offering to pick up things for their coworkers at their desks.  People are downloading data from websites before they go down. There’s a protest outside the main USAID building.  Once again terrifying but… a little thrilling.  Only this time it feels misplaced to me.  I don’t think things are going to be ok.  This is no quick hurricane and even if we have a vaccine, it won’t be allowed to be distributed.

We were so close to epidemic control of HIV across the world.  A status we clawed our way to over decades.  These changes are going to kick out the fingers of our progress and plummet.  The damage is done, and it will leave more than a scar.  And every day brings a new terrifying reality.  It makes you wonder how long did it actually take for Rome to fall?  At what point will history remember us as the people who stayed in Gilead for too long?  Next month? Next week? Tomorrow?

My new baby is sleeping next to me (obviously or how else would I have had the time to write this).  I had so much more optimism when we decided to bring her (painstakingly) into this world.  Maybe the ultimate action of optimism, an oath that I saw hope enough to bring her into it.  And now a silenced part of me is terrified that my hope was naive and stupid.  But when I look at her beautiful, sleeping face a rage of tears and fire stick in my throat and make my hands shake.  She is the reason that me and her father will fight.  I don’t know what that will look like yet, but I dare you to fuck with us. 

She's stirring so I have to stop writing and begin my guessing game of is it poop, hunger or gas?  And that will distract me from the constant pings on my phone.  But I know tonight when I'm in her dark and quiet nursery instead of a lullaby I'll whisper, I will fight for you.  I will fight for you until you can fight beside me.

A letter to my mom

2012, Age 23, Gaibandha Bangladesh

Dear Lisa,

I am sitting at the long conference table at my work.  I like it better here than my office sometimes because it's quiet, and I can spread out all of my papers on the table around me.  The door to the balcony is open behind me and I can hear rickshaws and rain.  I am drinking this stupid little cup of coffee.  But it's filled with delicious and precious Starbucks instant coffee.

For lunch I had a small piece of chicken soaked in deeply spicy curry, white rice, mixed green vegetables and a garlicky, soupy dhal.  I often drink my dhal in a bowl like soup.

I have an excel spread of all my tasks and goals and deadlines.  It's color coded.  I work through them systematically, often switching between jobs to keep life spicy.

I'll stay at work until 6pm and then take a rickshaw or a car home.  It will get dark around six and the sun will be large and low in the sky.  Every stand will be filled with people stopping on their way home for a cup of sweet cha tea.  The blacksmiths will still be at work and every time they strike metal the sparks will light up the night around them.  Grocery stalls will be lit by their candles and will be pushing people to buy the bananas that might go bad before morning.

I'll go home, do 1/2 an hour of P90X workout videos WHICH ARE CHANGING MY LIFE, and take a shower.  It's a hot shower if I remember to flip the switch to heat the water 20 minutes in advance.  On  Mondays and Wednesdays my Bangla tutor comes to meet me at our house.   Jahangir, our cook, brings him up a tray of tea and biscuits and for an hour we talk in Bangla, learn new grammar rules and vocab, and listen to audio recordings of children's stories that he recorded for us.

He leaves and Jahangir will ring the dinner bell.  Which is really the emergency bell.  We all will sit at one big table and eat more dhal, rice, vegetables, and chicken, mutton or fish.  I like the fish the best.  Even though it often chokes me with its small bones.  After dinner we'll make some tea and sit around talking.  I take my tea upstairs with me and watch a movie or play a video game.  Lately I've been obsessed with watching National Geographic and Planet Earth.  I find them so calming.  I bought a whole bag of them up in Dhaka and am now working my way through "SHARK WEEK."  Sometimes I'll play the guitar.

I'll often reach into my stash and eat a few treats from your package.  I'm ridiculously hoarding them and savoring only a few morsels every night.  Last night was 2 ginger cookies and some chips and dip.  The chips are beyond stale but are you kidding me?  I don't care not one bit.  It's the small things that are precious.

Miss you and love you so damn much.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

Florence

I crawled out of my mosquito net before the sun.  I put on my clothes in the dark and walked through the damp grass to the Land Cruiser that was parked outside waiting for me.  I had been living and working in Uganda for 17 months trying to improve babies’ access to vaccines.  For the last month I had been in Kitgum, a rural district in Northern Uganda.  For a decade, Kitgum was slaughtered and tortured by Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.  It had been 14 years since the massacre but you could still see the trauma resting heavy in everyone’s eyes.

The longer I stayed in Kitgum the more I could see its ghosts.

I was 26, as new to Uganda as I was to myself.  What kind of woman do I want to be?  Why do I keep moving so damn far away from home?  Where am I going?  These questions sat in my throat.  I was hoping I would find the answers, like big road signs, down one of those dirt roads.

My translator Terrence was waiting for me in the car and sleepily smiled at me as I slid into the passenger seat.    It was barely 5 am when we drove off down the dark, dirt roads.  The windows were cracked and the cool, moonlit air started to blow the sleep from my eyes.  Today I was joining a woman who would be walking the 4 hours to the nearest clinic to get her baby vaccinated.  As part of my research, I wanted to find out what motivated her to travel such a long distance, why she felt vaccinations were so important.  Maybe I could learn a little bit more about why so many of these children were dying of diseases medicine had cured.

It was early but Kitgum was already very much awake.  The red glow of morning breakfast fires dotted the mountainside.  An hour into the ride, Terrence pulled over next to a narrow path that cut through grass taller than me.  A group of motorcycles waited near the entrance to take passengers to the villages that were deep in the bush.  I tucked my skirt between my legs and got on the back of one motorcycle and Terrence got on the back of the other.  My driver wore a cutoff denim jacket and cool guy sunglasses.  He liked to make sharp turns to try and scare me.  But I hadn’t had coffee and was more pissed off than scared.  I hit him in the back of the head with my purse and told him to knock it off or I wouldn’t pay him.  We passed circular villages of mud huts with straw roofs and men playing dice under mango trees.  But we kept going, further and further.  After we had been winding down roads for half an hour, we turned off into a cluster of huts that sat before a large field of potatoes and cassava.  Terrence walked up to a woman, the mother of the household, who was bent over in half sweeping the area in front of her hut. 

“Afoyo!” “Ti mabe?”

“Bey” she said standing up to shake his hand. 

Terrence told me that her name was Florence.

Florence tied her little baby to her back with a large scarf and then tied a callabus, a dried pumpkin shell, over the baby’s head to protect him from the sun.  It looked like a little turtle shell.  A baby hunchback.  A reverse baby bump.  The motorcycles had already left to meet us at the clinic and we set off walking with Florence down the path we had just come.

Florence walked fast.  Terrance and her talked Acholi for a while before I burst in with my questions. 

I learned Rwo, the baby on Florence’s back, was her 10^th child but that only 6 had survived.  At 14 she got married to a boy in the next village.  She became pregnant with his baby.  When the Lord’s Resistance Army came to her village she saw her brother killed.  And then she was captured, ripped away from her family and husband and made the “wife” of one of the soldiers. 

Florence would talk for a while in the loping Acholi dialect and then Terrence would translate her words for me.  No part of me was prepared for her story.  Her words knocked the wind out of me and left my hands shaking.  I gave up writing.  I recorded her story on my phone.

She told me how he raped her every night.  How he forced her to take pills to end her pregnancy.  How she was supposed to be bathing in the river when she ran away.  How she wasn’t sure if her baby was dead inside of her but she kept running for the both of them.

Florence didn’t stop walking. Flies tried to balance on little Rwo’s forehead but couldn’t because his mother was walking too fast.  Florence didn’t cry or even stop to look at my reaction.  She just kept on walking.  For the next few hours we were quiet, walking to the rhythm our footsteps. 

I had no more questions.

The tall grasses grew into a jungle and then shrank back down into tall grasses.  I could see her, a 14 year old girl with a swollen belly running just ahead of me.  At 14, I was running around Brooklyn trying not to get caught in games of Hide and Seek. 

Florence said hi to the women who passed us, tall women with babies on their back and large bundles balanced on their head. 

Four hours of walking and we reached the clinic.  A long line of women and their babies already waited under the tree outside.   

“Do you see why I walk this far?” Florence asked through Terrence.  “My baby will survive.”

I tried not to think about the rich mothers in California who elect not to have their babies vaccinated.  

Florence untied the scarf from her back and laid it down in the grass.  Rwo laid on the scarf next to other babies under the tree. I squished his plump little cheeks and sat with Florence for three hours until the nurse could see her.  Rwo received some vaccines but the clinic was missing one of the vaccines in his series and Florence would have to walk four hours to and from the clinic again in a few days to see if it was in stock again. 

I paid for a motorcycle to take Florence and baby Rwo back to their house and hugged them goodbye.  When I could no longer see their motorcycle, I felt relieved.  And then guilty for being relieved.

I got on the back of the bike of Cool Glasses and we drove to the car.  We passed back through the villages and the jungles and the tall grasses.  We passed the women with the heavy sacks on their heads and the babies strapped to their backs.  Cool Glasses turned on his portable radio. 

“I like big butts and I cannot lie, you other brothers cannot deny…”

We passed a wooden cross that marked a mass grave.

I returned to my hotel and stood in the shower watching the red dirt from the walk circle off my body and down the drain. 

That day I stopped looking for answers down windy dirt roads and just kept going. 

The Best Pizza in NY According to Me and Science

I often get the question, “You’re a New Yorker, AND you’re Italian!  You’ll know where I can get the best pizza!”

They’re right.  I do.

But I’m going to do better than just telling you the best pizza.  I am going to quantify the quality of the pie and present to you not just another Buzzfeed ranking but rather a calculated list of mathematically undeniable excellence.

2 days.  2 judges.  9 pizza parlors.  4 ranking categories.

The 4 Categories:

1)      Sauce: A good sauce is the single most important part of the pizza.  It needs to taste fresh, and juicy but thick enough to differentiate it from pasta sauce.  It needs to be light, not weighed down with spices.    When you eat a good pizza sauce you should feel like you’re being hugged by grandma.

2)      Cheese: When you bite into a good piece of mozzarella it should squeak against your teeth.  It should puddle slightly with delicious oil and the stretch of cheese from slice to face should be long and unwieldy. 

3)      Crust:  When you hold the slice up by the crust end, it shouldn’t flop down.  No one likes a floppy pizza.  The crust should be supportive, crunchy and make your pizza stand erect.

4)      Ratio:  Do you have a bunch of cheese on a crust?  Then you have yourself a flat bread, not a pizza.  Are you swimming in sauce?  Well that’s kinda nice but it’s not right.  Ratio is important.

And those are the categories.  Each category is ranked 1-5 (5 being the highest) for a total score out of 20.  Scores were averaged between the two judges to come up with the below, statistically significant pizza ranking:

#9: Di Fara:

Some people are going to hate me for ranking Di Fara last.  But I don’t care because I have science and math on my side.  #9.  There’s  a stupid long line because this place is “Old school.” But let me tell you something.  This pizza scored a 5/20. A 1 on each category.  25%.  F. 

 A slice is a whopping $5. Their schtick is that every pie is made by the old man that started the place.  Which is cute, but he forgot how to make pizza.  Take a look at my picture below.  Oily, grey slice.  Sauce is barely there and suffocated by oil anyway so you can’t taste it.  Cheese tastes like plastic. Crust is a SIN. 

Grey Di Fara's Pizza

Here is a picture of me outside of Di Fara eating Totonno’s because (spoiler) Totonno’s ranked much higher.

Eating Totonno's outside Di Fara

#8) Tavola:

Tavola on 9^th and 37^th is dressed up to look like an old Italian grocery store.  It is a sit-down trattoria that serves whole pies.  Now let’s get something straight, there are sit down, wood burning stove pies, and there are slices.  I realize there is a difference and I am ranking both on the same list.  Moving on…

This pizza did not rank so well.  It scored an 11/20 (55%).  Its main downfall is that it really just wasn’t New York enough.  The sauce and cheese both ranked a 2 ratio 3, and the crunchy crust did better with a 4.  But alas, the crust did not save it as pizza is not bread.

Tavola

Tavola

Tavola Pizza

#7) Roberta’s:

Oh Roberta’s you hipster daughter you.  If I could subtract points for a tiki bar and too many mason jars I would.  But I will not.  Because that’s not science.

Roberta’s scored 12/20 (60%) and had a very decent pie.  (Keep in mind we scored all these against each other so Roberta’s is not 60% of all NY pizzas but rather 60% compared to other places on this list).  Sauce was too oniony so ranked a 2.  Crust was decent at a 3, ratio could have used more sauce so also a 3, and the mozz was really quite squeaky so got a 4.  I do have to admit that in addition to their regular, I tried their “Bee Sting”: tomato sauce, mozz, sopressata, chili and honey.  It was (gesture with kissing fingers and then raising them to heaven in that Italian way).

Roberta's Pizza

#6) Joe’s Pizza:

If you’re in the city, and you want an excellent slice, there is no better place than Joe’s Pizza.  It’s exactly what you want, especially at 2am.  (who am I kidding I haven’t been out until 2am in years).  Served on that flimsy barely there paper plate that you need to quadruple up so the oil doesn’t make it to your lap, you can scarf down two of these bad boys in seconds.  Cheese, sauce and ratio were golden all scoring a 4.  But the crust was mushy.  When you fold the pizza (the only way to walk and eat a pizza) it should have a nice small crack down the middle where the crust gave way to the break.  It should not be able to be rolled up into a ball.  Pizza is not rollatini.  The crust scored a 1 bringing Joe’s to a score of 13/20 (65%).

Joe's Pizza

#5) Motorino:

Freakin noms.  Sauce is delicious.  Cheese is very good.  But although the crust is a crunchy delight, it takes up way too much of the pizza.  So in this case, the ratio of crust to sauce and cheese was not doing it.  Motorino scored 14 (70%). 

Motorino Pizza

Motorino

#4) Grimaldi’s:

Grimaldi’s (the Coney island location) is so underrated.  Everyone thinks of Totonno’s when they think of Coney Island Pizza (and I guess they should since Totonno’s ranks higher than Grimaldi’s on this list) but should not forget about Grimaldi’s!  The mozz is fresh, the sauce is light, the crust is crunchy.   It is a good pie.  Scored a 15/20 (75%).

Grimaldi's

Here's to Grimaldi's

#3) L&B Spumoni Gardens:

I GREW UP ON THIS PIZZA.  When I was a teenager and had a cavernous pit of a stomach I once ate an entire square pizza pie in one sitting.  And yes, that is what you order at Spumoni Garden, the square.  Omgomgomg the square pizza is a dream come true.  The crust is crunchy, the center like a pillow and in a CRAZY TWIST the sauce is over the cheese which is brilliant because it makes the cheese melt better.  Then there is the sauce which has a recipe so secretive that the owner was SHOT DEAD by the mob who says he stole the recipe.  (True story).  Get the square, (or 4), and finish up your meal with a rainbow spumoni ice.  It will be heaven.  (also great people watching as this is where all the mafia goes when they visit Brooklyn from Staten Island). L&B scored a 90%. 

Spumoni Garden

Spumoni Garden

Spumoni Ice

#2)  And the winner of the best traditional slice of pizza in New York goes to Totonno’s in Coney Island.  This is everything a slice dreams it could be.  Really it’s just so perfect in all of the categories above that I’m not even going to go into it.  Just, trust me, next time you go to Coney Island tell Nathan’s to suck it and go to Totonno’s.  Your stomach will thank you.  (Even if the surly old guy behind the counter will not). 

Totonno's

Totonno's crust is perf

#1) Now for the big prize.  Winner of best pizza in New York according to this indisputable science is…Lucali’s in Carroll Gardens!  Holy mother of god this pizza.  Each bite of this pie will rock your world a little more until, with a flourishing dip of your slice in the EXTRA BOWL OF SAUCE THEY GIVE YOU, your world is thoroughly rocked.  I am writing this over a plate of bland chicken in Namibia right now.  I may have to cut my visit short and fly home to get a pie a Lucali’s.  From your table you can see Lucali in the back slowly making the pizza while looking around at his kingdom.  He got stabbed a few years ago by stealing another restaurateur’s girlfriend.  He touched my back and asked how my pizza was.  I almost fell over.  Lucali’s scored a perfect 5 in each category. 

And if you don’t believe the science listen to Jay Z and Beyonce.  They DITCHED THE GRAMMIES to have a pie at Lucali’s.  And Beyonce is better than science. 

Lucali's

Lucali's

So, what do you do?

Every time I am at a party I dread the question, “So, what do you do?”

Because there’s no casual way of saying what I do.  My elevator pitch sounds like it should have Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. 

“I am trying to assess the burden of HIV in 13 African countries.” 

And when I try to be flippant and nonchalant I sound like an asshole.   

“Oh you know.  HIV.  In Africa.  With the babies.”

I'm like the person who kvetches about her period cramps when asked a hallway “How are you?”

I asked a few of my girlfriends who do similar work and they all feel exactly the same way.  One of them said she feels bad because she feels like they feel like she thinks she’s a saint.  Shefeelsliketheyfeellikeshethinksshe’s.  How’s that for some emotional censoring? 

I asked a male colleague if he feels awkward.   Apparently he puts “I save babies in Africa” in his Tinder profile.

I think what I do is cool.  I think I'm cool for doing it.  I do not think I am a saint.  Most of what I do is spreadsheets and conference calls and hoping that my teams will not lose another survey tablet that I have to report to the IRB.  But I’m doing what I love and hopefully helping people as well.  I just want to stop this self-imposed meekness when I explain what I do with my life.

Maybe the next time I walk into a party I’ll announce to the room “I am Chelsea, and I study HIV in Namibia!  With the babies!  I will take questions now.”