Hello from Ethiopia

I landed in Addis at 1pm, plenty of time to get to the hotel, shower, and hit the town so that I could write an adventurous blog post.  Instead, I saw the bed and my eyes watered up like I was seeing an old friend.  So instead of exploring, I drank cup after cup of silky Ethiopian coffee and played Adele's new song on repeat.

Hello from the other siiiiiiiide.

Cupid Drinks a Coffee

Immediately off the plane from Uganda, I noticed the men.  And the big grocery stores.  And oh my god the men in the grocery stores.

I had spent a year and a half without a second date (you can read about my Uganda dating experiences here:  http://chelseatosea.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-science-of-dating-in-kampala.html ) and was definitely going a little cray cray.  I immediately revved up the old dating sites: Tinder, Ok Cupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, Cupid Drinks a Coffee, and set up my profile.  Twenty something girl seeks a real live boy.  Must have teeth.

I met a real live boy and we started to date.  We ate pizza and took walks during the last NY summer days and I texted him when I traveled.  “Dude, I’m going to get such massive thighs from all of this pooping in the squat toilet at the office.  How was your day baby?” 

I was stuffing myself with affection because I remember what it was like to be malnourished.  Four months after we started dating, it ended.  I was sad so I called Val.

“Vallie, I think I wore my heart on my sleeve and it hemorrhaged all over us.”

“You got laid and cuddles for 4 months?  How dare you be upset when people are dying in Africa from lack of snuggles?”

And she’s right. I’m in the land of plenty, no need to mourn.  But now that I’m feeling less like I need to pack on the kisses for the long winter, I can breathe and actually explore New York.  Next up: New York Snuggery http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-york-snuggery-offers-cuddles-hour-article-1.1173154

(maybe not)

Sensory Deprivation Tank

I want to explore things in New York like I do in other countries.  I may not be able to go on a quickie safari but there are tons of crazy shit New Yorkers do that would make even a lion’s head turn.  Like, pay $100 to be locked in a pod that deprives you of your senses.

I heard about the sensory deprivation tanks from the book I’m reading, Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks.  The book shares examples of how people who lose their sight, hearing, or even who have an extended period of lack of stimulation in their landscapes (desert, solitary confinement), can start to hallucinate.  Charles Bonnet syndrome is found in people who can hallucinate whole scenes in front of them but do not have sight.  Musical Ear Syndrome is when there is loss of auditory function and yet the person can hear music or people talking.  People can even hallucinate feelings if they’ve lost their sense of touch.

In an experiment to test hallucinations, people were put in a sensory deprivation tank for a long period of time and many started to hallucinate.  So I signed me and my friend Hannah up for back to back hour sessions at a sensory tank in Gramercy.  Because New York and Adventure and Hallucinations and Africa Doesn’t Have This.

I got to the “spa” early.  Hannah had already started her tank time and I wanted to hear about her experience before I went in.  The spa was basically this old dude’s house with women and their long grey hair sitting in various corners participating in the spa services.  Such services included: Cem Tech- Communicates with the Body’s Cellular Structure Use Millimeter Wave Technology, Biomat- The Combination of Far Infrared Light, Negative Ions and Amethyst Quartz Crystals Opens the Channels for Intelligent Cellular DNA repair and Total Body Wellness.  There was a women behind a curtain sitting on a full body vibrator. It was awkward.

When Hannah came out she looked all zenny.  Thing is, she is zenny.  She’s a meditator who’s done silent retreats and stuff so she was able to completely zone out and lose herself in there.  I didn’t have such high expectations for myself. My goal was just to not get too bored and hopefully hallucinate a medieval carnival.

When it was time, I was led into a small bathroom, given earplugs, and told to shower before entering the tank.  The “tank” was an oldish bathtub with sliding doors painted black to block out all light.  The temperature was regulated at 93 degrees Fahrenheit to closely match body temperature.  The water was filled with pounds of Epsom salts to keep the body floating. 

I started out by trying to cheat the system by trying to not float.  It’s nearly impossible! You’re completely buoyant.  It is a strange sensation.  You can’t see or hear anything and you start to lose your sense of self.  As a dancer-atheist-scientist, I see myself as my body, not as something inside my body.  But this somewhat falling apart, lukewarm bathtub challenged that.  I couldn’t feel a body or a space and was completely my mind.  And so my mind drifted.  “What if I were a corpse floating in a vat of embalming fluid?” Was my main thought.  And when I got bored of that I thought about what I wanted to eat for dinner.  45 minutes passed relatively quickly and then I got bored of not hallucinating so started to play games.  What if I wiggled only my pinky.  Would that be enough to propel myself into the tub’s wall on the left.  YES! 

When my time was over, I showered and put on my clothes and stepped outside.  I felt like I was still floating and was very calm.  My mind completely serene from lack of senses.  And then I stepped down the stairs and into the subway and saw a man jacking off to the Bible.

I did not "come home"

Back in Uganda

We packed into 1 Land Cruiser, 10 adults, 1 baby, for a 9 hour trip to Kitgum, 1 long and bumpy dirt road, 0 air-conditioning.   Upon arriving, my hotel had no hot water and no electricity.  It’s a cup water, soap up, splash-water-on-self kind of shower and a no fan night.  I lay in my bed without a sheet, covered only by a blanket of buzzing mosquitoes.  A rooster wakes me at 5 am and there is no hot water to make coffee.  I get to work at 8:30 and wait for the training which doesn’t start until 2 hours after it is supposed to.  Remind me again why I left New York?

When I got off the plane in Uganda, I felt different.  It felt different.  I breathed in the thick air and didn’t feel at home.  I have only been in the US for a month, I’ve visited home for that long before, but I guess, a part of me has closed the door on Uganda.  I met up with friends and danced and drank but it was in an ecstatic way, the kind you reserve for vacations.  Not the kind of prudent, I better not really let go because that guy at the bar is kind of cute and I have to do my laundry tomorrow, kind of way.  (Just kidding I never did my own laundry in Kampala.) 

This is the first trip I’ve made after having moved back to New York.  My contract says I will travel 45% of my time to Uganda, and soon, Ethiopia and Liberia.  Part of me wants so much more.  I still want to work at a refugee camp doing research on outbreaks, or to do emergency research on epidemics.  But part of me wants so much less.  I missed my friend’s wedding and I started to date a really cute man.

I took a walk after work through the village.  The sun was setting and damn beautiful.  Nothing particularly profound occurred to me.  No eureka moment.  But in this moment I was happy.  So I guess we’ll see.

Jews for Jesus in Gulu

While eating dinner at the hotel, in walks a rabbi.  Very strange, I had never seen a Jewish man adorned with a kippah and tzitzis in Uganda let alone in rural Uganda.  He joined a table of people bent over bibles. I moved my chicken a little closer.  The Rabbi ordered some fish and shared how he preached about the good lord Jesus Christ today at a local Ugandan church.  I picked up my wine glass and joined their table because it was a Friday night, in a town with no electricity, and this was too good.

The Rabbi had his own TV show in Ohio and was traveling to African countries to film and preach the word of Jesus.  He was joined by 2 young (maybe early twenties) camera handlers and an older man.  In Gulu, Uganda, I had found my very own Jews for Jesus.  

“Do you believe in the good lord’s word?  Have you been saved?”

“No, sorry guys.  I’m an artificially inseminated, daughter of lesbians, haver of pre-marital sex, approver of abortion, worshipper of no god, true heir to the iron throne.”

“No I have not been saved.  But I’m open to the idea!”

Rabbi S believed that Jewish people are the chosen people, Jesus was after all a Jew, but the bible doesn’t end with the Old Testament and Jesus is our true lord and savior.  He’s a preacher with a yarmulke. A pastor with Chanukah. 

I moved to the other side of the table, because the rabbi kept putting his hand on my head and praying for me, and started talking to the young cameraman.  He was nice in a pasty, long nailed sort of way and I talked with him for several hours.  He had some very good points as long as we stayed away from morality.   But is where I always trip up when someone is trying to convert me.  I don’t have faith.  I don’t believe in God, and I don’t have faith.

 

I explained that to cameraman and he said, “Chelsea, just come to the Crusade tomorrow night.  You’ll see miracles and then you’ll get faith.”  (They thought it was ok to call it a Crusade?  Yikes.)

The next night I take a boda to the Crusade Arena (…) and am shocked to see Rabbi S on a stage overlooking tens of thousands of Ugandans.  And I’m not exaggerating.  Tens of thousands.  I walk through the crowd and take pictures and videotape.   The rabbi is being translated by a Ugandan Pastor who shouts his words and stomps his feet.  It was fun, like a Jewistian field day.  People brought their kids and women were selling roasted maize.  And then it started getting dark and Rabbi’s preaching took a darker tone. 

“Homosexuality is the greatest sin and Obama is the anti-christ!” The crowd clapped their hands and whooped.  I felt a chill run down my spine.  There was a lightning storm in the distance and the clouds lit up over the faces. 

“I want you to put your hands on your head.   I am going to bless you all now.  Get RID of the evil spirits that reside inside of you.  Cast away the devil.  Be free now!”

The woman next to screamed and sank to the floor.  Her arms and legs were writhing.  People around her tied her hands and legs and shouted at the devil inside of her “You shut up!  You shut up!” And then another woman fell down beside her. It was terrifying.  I kept filming.  I pushed through the crowd and walked right onto the stage.  I was staring at thousands of faces completely enraptured by the man next to me.  A young girl was brought up onto the stage who was foaming at the mouth, her eyes rolling back into her head. This girl was having a seizure.  The rabbi comes up to me “This is how it all happens in the book of Acts.  Women falling down screaming, having seizures.”

I went home freaked out, the women still screaming in my head.  What was that? 

I opened the Bible.  I put down the Bible.  I opened up Google.  I was most interested in that young girl who was foaming at the mouth and having a seizure.  How is that possible?  Is there such a thing as a psychological seizure?  Google’s not super helpful on the matter but I did find this: http://www.macalester.edu/academics/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/tle09/Religiosity.html Temporal Lobe seizure, a seizure invoked by a strong emotional reaction controlled by the temporal lobe. 

The cameraman was wrong.  The Crusade did not bring me faith.  I am not a Jew for Jesus.  Or Jewish.  Or Jesus.  

But damn.

Ebola

They were given 72 hours to leave to pack a bag and fly across the world and fight Ebola.  When they got there, the disease was already rampant.  Traditional burial practices and fear had made this disease spread faster than anyone had ever imagined and they had to hit the ground sprinting.  An alphabet of NGO acronyms competed to put their letters on the isolation tents and the efforts were disjointed and competitive.  Their task wasn’t just to move in and cure Ebola.  They had to figure out how to change the behavior of burial practices so people would not wash the dead before burying.  They had to work with anthropologists to connect with traditional healers and to learn about community practices.  They had to figure out how to set up isolation units when people feared that they would get Ebola if they went to them.  They had to teach local staff how to properly put on and take off protective equipment so that they would not infect themselves.  How do you turn over beds when Ebola has such a long infectious period?  How do you motivate health workers to come to work when their peers are dying from the disease all around them?

My friend talked of a major spread in one of her villages in Sierra Leone because two gang members got into a bloody fight. One died in the fight and the other contracted Ebola from blood contact.  He went into hiding because he was now running from murder.  In the process he infected hundreds of people and would not surrender to the hospital for fear of being jailed.

Now the questions are, how do you prevent a future outbreak if we do not know the animal reservoir?  And what are the long term effects the disease on Ebola survivors?  What about how we know Ebola can stay in the semen but we have no data on how long it lasts for? 

Rock Climbing in Railay

I picked Krabi, Thailand for my vacation because of the world famous rock climbing on the nearby island of Railay.  It was perfect, I could spend 2 days luxuriating at the spa resort, listening to my new favorite thing in the world: Serial, and one day climbing limestone cliffs.

I woke up at 7:30 and took a car to the dock.  My driver, Ali, told me his story.  In 2004, when the Tsunami hit Thailand, Ali was out on his boat.  He saw the wave coming.  The first wave he rode on his boat but the second pulled him and the boat into the middle of the sea.  It took him 2 days in a leaky boat to make it back to shore. 

Whether or not he was telling the truth was irrelevant.  Although the city was mostly built back up, the wave was still present in everyone’s eyes.  Signs warned that you are in a tsunami zone and to please seek higher ground.  If I die in a tsunami, I’ll be furious.

I boarded the wooden boat and sat between a girl with a Hello Kitty cat headband and a Thai man with dreadlocks and tattoos of Buddha.  The plank from boat to beach was made of old water jugs strung together.  I joined a small ground and guide and we walked through a few beaches before stopping at our rock.  A sky high limestone face that jutted in to little caves and out into arching overhangs. 

When it was my turn to hook in, I ran up an easy wall, stretching out my muscles and warming up my hands.  Some of my holds were literally stalactites.  I summited in a cave at the top and gave myself a second to look down at the blue green water and the inselbergs that looked like a tectonic plate collide had just made them.  I repelled down making sure not to swing into a cave. 

A crowd had formed where we were climbing and I felt like a rock (climbing) star.  I climbed until the sun made the rocks hot to touch and I was told I had time for one more climb.  This one had a cave right a the beginning.  You had to hoist yourself onto a platform above your head with very few footholds before.  No way could I do that: essentially a pull up then push up mid air.  I squirmed and wriggled, then blanked my mind, breathed deep and did it.  Unbelievable adrenaline rush.  And this is why I do this. 

The rest of the climb I had to chimney up this cave crack which was fun.  I looked down at my guide belayer and saw he didn’t have his hands on the rope and was deep in conversation with the friend next to him.  Comforting.

No hands.

After the climb I found this blonde Adonis of a shirtless German man and watched him climb to “learn his techniques”.  What?!?!  But I was getting hungry (Food > Man) so I packed up my hormones and looked for a place for lunch.  Along the way I saw a sign : This Way to the Viewpoint and Lagoon.  “Oh cool, I have time for this.”

The path started easily enough, slippery but relatively flat except for a few boulders you had to climb over.  Then the trail was like “Sucker! Climb this!” and I had to climb a high vertical, grabbing onto ropes to not slip down.  I reached the view point out of breath, looked around for a sec, took a picture, and saw another sign “Shortcut to Lagoon”.  Cool, might as well, I got this far.  The trail slopes down and now I am holding the ropes to walk down over steep rocks.  I keep passing people on the way. 

“Am I close?”

“Not really.”

Then the trail took a turn for impossible and I was now climbing down vertical, slippery rocks with just a rope and a few unreliable grips.   I did this down many cliffs, one of which I had to climb through hole in a cave.  Flip flops from failed tourists littered the ground like forgotten dreams.  I saw a few hikers climbing back up. 

“It’s worth it, you can do it, keep going!”

“Thanks!  …fuckyou.”

An hour, so many bruises, I reached the lagoon.  It was very silent except for birds echoing between the walls of the valley and up into the blue circle of sky above.  I was the only one there.  I lay in the water on my back and looked up serenely until I crashed my leg into a rock and cut it open.  Which, of course.

The Viewpoint

Ropes down to the Lagoon

The Lagoon

I climbed back out of the lagoon and literally pulled myself back up the walls.  When I rain into a couple in flip flops who asked how much longer,

“You’ll be fine, you can do it!”

Covered in mud, I drank two coconuts and made it back just in time for the last boat.