THE Venting Expat

it's a fine samba romance

2010-03-05T13:25:00.005+01:00

So here I am listening to Billy Holiday "Fine Romance"....what a bold, beautiful song.
I tried to dance to the old Broadway tunes. Tried to remember how it carries my feet, so different to my inner sambas.
More stiff, the rhythm is there, steps go fast, yet the body stays firm.
Got it.
And then inner dramatic last pose at the end note of the musical number.
That's why all my love of cabaret is replaced with that samba hip swing. More suave. More understated.
African rhythm’s honest vibrancy is what I miss.
How dance is part of each day. How clapping hands together is the way to be welcomed inside someone's home. There in Botswana, I remember. We danced at the courtyard of an African house, part of their baby birth celebration, drunk the sorghum beer (oh, that was awful!, allowing myself to be culturally un pc!)....It was such a beautiful day. We watched the race, the biggest amusement of the week of race cars passing through the bush roads on their way to Namibia. It was the same day when I saw wild elephants for the first time on the way back through the natural reserve. Sitting on the roof of the car moving slowly towards the approaching sunset posing as a tourist with the camera, suddenly the road is crossed by a gigantic mother elephant and her two babies. The whole setting is so obvious: we are in her territory, this is not a zoo. She looks at the car slightly annoyed and slowly walks by. Stunned by her grace I simply forget that I have a camera, at least during these crucial seconds when our eyes meet. So God bless Botswana and its' rhythm when keeping secret the Okavango is becoming increasingly difficult. May all the gods keep Okavango villages smiling, may they assure that the tourists will be respectful and patient, that the hippos be wild, that the baboons remain baboons and that the Queen termite enjoys fully each one of her millions of relationships a year. May the guides ravel at the first time wild bush wonderers who let them see its beauty afresh; may the tourists recognize the guides' unique craft. Let the elephant cemeteries lie undisturbed and let the giraffes continue looking surprised.

My saudade for Botswana. My saudade for Brazil lost inside the sambas of Rio in winter time. After all, it is only after I have learned how to dance the slow, the melancholic saudade samba is when I have began to truly understand and love this dance. No other dance, for now, seems more about the feeling, pure reaction to rhythm, the comfort of dancing to sadness, the true power of catharsis in dance. Because at the core there is always the soothing rhythm of life, the very essence of the African drum. The trance like rhythm, magical rhythm, forcing your body to make the healing move. To smile in the face of life’s hardship. The music of slaves, the beauty of African call to life combined with the uprooted Portuguese tropical fado. My samba. Yes, I intend to continue to samba through life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/mar/04/okavango-delta-floods-of-life?picture=359281783

Gracias Sevilla...(love letter)

2010-02-12T20:15:00.003+01:00

Sevilla,
I walked and I biked in the rhythm of your streets
I met you when I needed to get over old relationships
With other cities
You helped me get over my suadade for Brazil
Reminded of passion for life
You seduced me with the drama of your poetry
You thought me how to listen to dance
How to dance in my thoughts
Without forever samba on ipod
With Lorca’s meditative words

“Sevilla es una torre
llena de arqueros finos.
Sevilla para herir.
Córdoba para morir.
Una ciudad que acecha
largos ritmos,
y los enrosca
como laberintos.
Como tallos de parra
encendidos.
¡Sevilla para herir!
Bajo el arco del cielo,
sobre su llano limpio,
dispara la constante
saeta de su río.
¡Córdoba para morir!
Y loca de horizonte
mezcla en su vino,
lo amargo de don Juan
y lo perfecto de Dionisio.
Sevilla para herir.
¡Siempre Sevilla para herir!”
Federico García Lorca (1898 - 1936)
Gracias mi nuevo amor….

Sun Rises Again on the Expat Blog

2010-01-23T01:31:00.005+01:00

I have never been a huge admirer of Hemingway until I was introduced to “The Sun Also Rises”. I always thought that the problem with mainstreaming Hemingway had much to do with the heavy masterpieces being shoved down the throats of 15 year olds around the world struggling to deal with the epic of death in “The Old Man and the Sea”. While this is nothing in comparison with the Polish literature shoved down the throats of Polish teenagers where titles speak for themselves as in “The next one to the gas chamber please” or “Ashes and Diamonds”, I take Hemingway as my guide to Spain. Ernest has been clear on defining the rules for the expat writers: live in the artsy quarter of a European city, write in a cafè, talk to other artists, drink lots. While not having been able to follow Hemingway’s rules since moving to San Casciano Val di Pesa, a small town 30 minutes outside of Florence, no amount of world’s most excellent wine has taken away all the ache for a proper writing cafè or enoteca. Not surprisingly hence, each time over the past year when I tried to write my expat blog again it has always been inside the premises of the Enoteca/wine bar on Via Urbana 49 in Rome. Not because they got WIFI or because Angela has many times handed over the keys to Lynda’s apartment or guarded my little bag left over while I run to my meetings at the UN. No, it is because the dimly lit interiors smelling of wine corks, cheese and garlic have always given me the inspiration. Via Urbana was home away from home back home in Rome to home on my way to my spirtitual home. It was Rome.
Now I am off to Seville. Heart of Andalucia which is to Spain what Tuscany is to Italy. Just the idea of going, moving, traveling makes me write again. Throughout last year I was going back to the cities, Rome and Rio de Janeiro, never a tourist, always at home while not living there anymore or yet. Seville will be different. Seville will make me write about Florence.

“Eat the garlic”, Mike said, “you must eat the garlic!” (paraphrased from “Sun Also Rises”). Somebody ones said that garlic is to cooking what insanity is to art. I say, going to Seville to polish my Spanish is to me what cafè’s have been to Hemingway.
I am back.

when you go through the winter of words, read RUMI

2009-02-25T23:03:00.007+01:00

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

And frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

And begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

Doesn’t make any sense.”

……………………………………………………….

“my worst habit is I get so tired of winter

I become a torture to those I’m with.”

……………………………………………………………..

“Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,

No light and no land anywhere,

Cloudcover thick. I try to stay

Just above the surface, yet I’m already under

And living within the ocean.

You’re crying. You say you’ve burned yourself.

But can you think of anyone who’s not

Hazy with smoke?”

……………………………………………………..

Love, tell an incident now

That will clarify this mystery

Of how we act freely, and are yet

Compelled.

it is RUMI who has helped me to find the words to say what it is like to leave Rome, what it is like to be in between places, to await for the arrival of Spring.

the commentary on last year's world affairs

2008-10-08T19:13:00.002+02:00

This is ironic given how apologetic this particular publication has been for the lack of regulation of financial markets. This is ironic how before the financial crash this year alone has pushed additinal 100 million people into starvation, mostly due to financial speculation on the commodities market. It is ironic how few billion are still missing from the hunger pot.

but we bail out the banks. with hundrets of billions.

yoga

2008-06-25T15:33:00.000+02:00

YOGA

I learn to open my body
Stretch out my mind
When wind blows through me
With its healing whispers

Inhaling faith
Exhaling fear
Inhaling trust
Exhaling tears

Yoga

I open my mind.

Who are the Romans?

2008-05-29T00:19:00.010+02:00

In the mist of madness and chaos of preparations for the sudden Heads of State Summit in Rome to address the food price crisis I am still enjoying the intense smell of jasmine while driving back and forward in front of the Colloseum on my old motorino... Sleep deprived from the late night work sessions I pick up a newspaper in the coffee bar across from my office. Suddently I can't finish my caffe machiato. I see the flashes of fascist salutes from the demonstration wittnessed a few years back in the middle of a major piazza in Rome. I choke on the coffee. I order a glass of water from the tap which Romans jokingly call "da sindaco" - meaning "from the mayor of Rome". THe tap water is still drinkable but the sindaco or the mayor of Rome has changed. For the first time since I live in Rome which has now been more than 8 years - the new mayor belongs to the neo-fascist party. This news didn't bother me so much as I could understand the disillusionment of Italians with their stagnant center-left political system bringing some on the verge of radicaly wrong voting choices. What schocked me is the anti-immigrant discourse that has suddenly turned into acts of violence that this city has not yet seen.

"Fears of rising intolerance towards migrants in Italy grew after a masked group armed with sticks went on the rampage in a multi-ethnic Rome neighbourhood, smashing shop windows while hurling abuse.
In the 10-minute blitz on Saturday, the group of between 10 and 20 men attacked a food shop owned by an Indian migrant and two stores operated by Bangladeshis, disappearing before police arrived.
The assault comes as Silvio Berlusconi's administration launches a crackdown on illegal immigration, and days after a mob firebombed Gypsy camps in Naples. Last month crowds at Rome's town hall welcomed newly-elected mayor Gianni Alemanno with fascist salutes." quoting the paper....

As a white blonde with a semi-stable job it shouldn't bother me, right? Everything is normal, right? Yet, the history of scapegoating makes me sick to my stomach. Only the other night I have witnessed one of the most amazing tributes to the diversity of Rome in the performance of its famous Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio. The blending of musicians from Senegal, Tunisia, Peru, Hungary, US, Brazil and Cuba among others who have created some of the most spectacular world tune rhythms thanks to the courage and creative vision of one Italian orchestra director.

I go to the Piazza Vittorio market whenether I manage to wake up early enough on Saturday or have to cook anything requring any spices from any corner of the earth... The contrast with the disgust at the political discourse that seeks to blame the frustrations of an average Italian with the country's economic and political crisis on the immigrants - the useful scapegoat they are and have always been. On Sunday my American friend tells me: "it is amazing how you can see the history of Rome on the faces of Romans - they came literally from everywhere". Roma. Romans. Who are we?
As you, my beloved Eternal City, open your doors to welcome farmers, delegates and journalists from all around the world next week; as your beauty lies in your openness to travel. "All roads lead to Rome" -. "tutte le strade portano a Roma" - this is precisely the story of the musicians from Piazza Vittorio and this is the story of the millions that have chose you as home since the time of Romulus...
Stand up and defend your open window to the world.

Freedom is a luxury...

2008-05-12T11:11:00.004+02:00

Oh, my dearest 3 or 4 devoted venting expat readers - this is just to re-confirm my commitment to this blog and to assure that despite my long silence it has hardly been heartlessly abandoned.

31, so far, has been my age of disillusionment and of the intense recognition of how prescious my little freedoms are. Of how I am willing and ready to compromise and give some of them up for the sake of a healthy attachment - as long as that would not result in compromising the essence of who I am. I thank the flying confessions project - the film made about women like me for women like me: the travels, the conversations and above all the goal: to let go of fear. THe fear that we have been tought, the fear that has been installed in us, the fear that results from all of the unnecessary suffering of the female kind. Freedom is a luxury that I am only learning how to use...and it exciting...

And I look forward to passing the camera myself...you can learn more at www.flyingconfessions.org

Everything is Illuminated, again

2008-01-31T22:49:00.000+01:00

One of my best friends has just came back to Rome from Pakistan. Beautiful how the words "best friend" have just slipped out even if I don't know her for a long, long time in someone else's definition of how long you need to know someone to call them a "best friend". I call her a "best friend" because I miss her when she is away and I am happy whenever she is back. I am calling her a best friend because she asks me the right questions - she asks the kind of questions that only the very best of friends bother to ask. I call her one of my best friends because her presence and existence have enriched my life and because I know that we will be friends for a very, very long time. And so there she comes, with her shawls and chocolate, but above all with her love of books and literature. One day, she is carrying in her hands "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Foer and I realize that for the very first time....First, I have seen the film. It has always been the other way around: first comes the book, then comes the dissappointment with the film that I have already played out in the eye of my imagination. Regardless if first came the book or first came to film, now I know that my two friends, who came from very different cultures, did find something in common to laugh at and both are and will be the best of intercultural communications professors that college students could ever be blessed with. Intercultural communication is our daily bread in the age of globalization. Mastering it requires a bit of a heart. M. and A. know how to open it. This sneak preview shouldn't hurt.

Romancing Glass Books

2007-12-03T21:17:00.001+01:00

“(..) burn the books, they got too many names and psychosis, all this increminating evidence would surely hunt me if someone would break into my house…” Alanis lullabied my early 20s in New York City, what seems like ages ago… Then I dreamed of having the proverbial room of my own with books everywhere...

Post polluted Bangkok filled with soothing tenderness of Thais I burn the incense bought at the temple of Wat Pho in my own Roman apartment.

My incriminating evidence “Love, again” by Doris Lessing bought in the Border Bookstore outside of Liverpool the day before attending the wedding of boyfriend’s sister. It is laying next to my bed together with Anais Nin’s “Spy in the House of Love” and recently borrowed “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss.

I attend some UN Consultation on Gender, Property Rights and HIV AIDS pandemic. One presenter steers away from illusive technical classifications of the pervasiveness of gender discrimination at all levels and he cites Lessing: “I write what women are saying, I hear what women are saying but they are not listening.” My sudden aversion to anyone, anywhere who says that “we want to give women a voice”.

The power of words. I listen to overly familiar “testimonies” of women from Uganda – stories of domestic violence, inheritance battles, pride and loss. We are one in our inability to intellectualise human suffering caused by simple and unaddressed injustice. I am intellectualising my refusal of the victimization tactics. Words can hurt too.

“Before he could speak and harm her with words while she lay naked and exposed, while he prepared a judgement, she was preparing her metamorphosis, so that whatever Sabina he struck down she could abandon like a disguise, shedding the self he had seized upon and say “that was not me.”. “Spy in the House of Love”

We have to keep gender relations in mind. Not just women. Someone says repeatedly in the forum. Then the whole talk of empowerment, humiliation and apparently empowerment in public acknowledgement of humiliations. I have never seen men come to international forums in order to feel empowered by sharing their stories of humiliation and violence incurred on behalf of women. I say then …no…this is about women’s rights. And one of the feminists has a son. I can just see how terrified she is when she finds out that if a woman is battered it is the fault of the mother of the batterer according to cultural understanding in one of the countries. Laws don't help. Too many women walk away from courts afraid of the power of hurtful words.

We are all fragile. Violence is an expression of our own inability to acknowledge our fragility.

“During the Age of Glass, everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile. For some it was hand, for others a femur, jet others believed it was their noses that were made of glass. The Age of Glass followed the Stone Age as an evolutionary corrective, introducing into human relations a new sense of fragility that fostered compassion.” “The History of Love”.

Would we all break if we couldn’t write? Is this why the web is also run on fiber optics?

Once on the way to Bangkok

2007-11-11T21:29:00.000+01:00

The fortune to get that window seat on the flight Zurich-Bangkok checking in at midnight on the way from Lisbon. For once the Swiss got the vegetarian meal right. Tune into the entertainment - films. Suddenly I am awake. Suddenly someplace in my twilight zone, one thing is real. For once. For once Once is the film I know I want hear again and again. It touches the core. Ireland with the Czech soul. I hear my own parallel. Music. English pop that is the constant background to my own love story. Music that is background to any story... The film I wish we could have made. If only I wouldnt be on the plane again and again. Kocham go, kocham ciebie, miluje cie...
See it if you can.

Roma - La Cità delle Donne!

2007-10-04T18:26:00.000+02:00

Rome - the city of women. It was so for Fellini and it is so for me - not that I aspire to compare myself to the cinematographic genius of La Bella Vita in the times when Via Veneto was filled with life and laughter as opposed to the overpriced cafes with bad bellinis for confused tourists on the honeymoon Soprano's style at the Exelsior. Of course I belong to the less posh but far more lively and authentic Roman quarters. If you know me and you've been to Rome with me on one of my weekday evenings - chances are you have been dragged to the Tre Scalini on at least one occassion. This certainly is not the place for those in Italy after refined wine tasting tours offered on the Tuscan vineyards. This is the place though that certainly offeres the best atmosphere that a Roman wine bar can possibly pull off when in need of a table to meet your girlfriends. The food is good and most importantly cheap, the bartenders still remember me from the time we shared that bottle of Zobrowka straght out of Warsaw (courtesy of my friend Olga) securing a small "sconto"(discount) for future libacies and you can always find a good bottle for a decent price on the wine list - the trick is not to go for it per glass.

So it is in Tre Scallini where we often meet. Probably the best addition to the oh so "BOBO" (Borgouise - Bohemian) Monti quarters. I can just hear Lynda lecturing me that Monti still lives in its antique tradition of small fruit vendors and proper working girls behind the facade of Soho styled boutiques and Chinese dry cleaning.

But I was supposed to write about women. Yet, they are not just women, they are my friends, my amazing friends. THe people with whom one can discusses the pains of love, the misunderstandings of distance relationships, the need of hugs in the time where good hugs are a rarity, the twisted stories about everpresent exes or unpresent future love interests. The expat stories of what brought us here. The conversations are worth writing down - they strike me as better then in Sex in the City. So perhaps, I will, one day, risk writing it all down in the form of a new series starring a multiculutral community of women in Rome with the Cheers like element of the regular meetings in the Wine Bar where everybody knows your name.

Post Landing Tomato Blues

2007-09-21T22:16:00.000+02:00

Landings are always difficult. Especially landing back in the hot, small apartment in Rome after all the airconditioned spaces of airports and hotels, after the cool breeze of the summer evenings in Poland. Opening myself to let all of the African and Bengali culture in and closing in on the so called roots back in Poland. THere was a week of traveling up to the Baltic Coast - the place where I saw the sea for the very first time. Went back to that very wide and white Baltic beach in Jantar, the amber coast, where my sea addiction has began at 1.5 year old. And now, after 12 years in New York and 7 years in Rome, I can't imagine living too far from the deep blue..And as Warsaw changes daily, maybe not in the same frantic rhythm as Shanghai, I still spotted the same houses crafted out of the wood, the same fishermen selling freshly smoked fish in our northeastern coast... Letting so much in: the smell of the Baltic sea, the smell of the moonsoon rain in Dhaka, the odorless winter dry air of Johannesburg. An intense summer of mixing more work then pleasure but still the "gratitude" for having been able to work for a bit back "home". And so hit with the difficult landing back in Rome. The job, so fascinating, but so insecure. All of it so that I can pay for this tiny, hot flat. The digital divide between Montefiridolfi and anywhere else in Europe. Almost as if the perfect taste of these round, red, perfumed tomatoes is not enough to soothe the fundemental question "why am I here?" But just when I am about to launch myself into the project of applying for jobs in Brussels I am reminded of the words of Andi Shiraz "Anyone who’s lived and loved the proverbial bel paese knows that the only thing harder than living in Italy is walking away from it. Italy is a dream that when you settle into it makes you think hard about what you’ve done". And so I know I will read her article again and again on the American Mag: http://www.theamericanmag.com/article.php?show_article_id=568 because she is back home in Rome. Seeing Andi in Tre Scallini is filling that empty spot I felt back in Warsaw. Picking my peperoncino from Calabria to spice up my pasta while cooking for my friend Gary made me feel home. Having the Australian grils crash over to see Rome - made me feel home. Yes, Luca and Javier have left to London and Madrid respectively and they took with them the soothing sounds of their guitars. But it is thanks to my mad job that I have an intimate understanding of the samba in Brazil and it is my life in Rome that tought me just how good it is to have a big window open to the sounds of the world. Even if I miss Poland's green grass and the skies that make fool out of my attempt to praise the sun when there is sometimes much more poetry in the shades of grey.

Peperoncino

2007-07-25T23:52:00.000+02:00

Oh.

Am in Warsaw now escaping the uberable heat of Rome...Am happy and trapped and missing the spice of my urban-gypsy-Roma lifestyle. Home? My language. The language in which I choose not to write this blog... Home? The bar on Via Marmorata where everyone knows my name. Home? My small urban apartment near the Gazometro...

I am calm though...at least that much. Not stressed. Morning mist intenesely green grass under my feet. Laptop on my laps. And too much clean new funky shops and houses with perfect gardens to find any reason to write poetry.

I miss the spice. I don't miss the heat. Ready for the South Africa and Bangladesh tour courtesy of my work...

The Immigrant Punk

2007-06-28T16:35:00.000+02:00

It is not so much that I think that Gogol Bordello is the greatest rockin man out-there, but he is definitely one of the most original... I have certainly not seen such intense energy exhibited on stage since ages. Yet, the best part was being there with my little expat group of friends: Ukrainian, Norwegian, Russian, French, American and of course Polish. You may say that the representation was skewed in favour of those familiar with the so called slavic folk sounds, but Gogol grooves in many dimensions.

Viva expats! OH YEAH!

few words

2007-06-07T01:05:00.000+02:00

Lately I have been captivated by reading the words from the blogs of my friends...Andi, Lynda, Marco, Luca. Writing as a cure, writing to restore sanity, writing for the beauty of it.

Lately I have been captivated by the idea that I can sleep more and do less
Lately I have been captivated by the idea that I want to do the parts of my work that energize me and not the ones that destroy me
Lately I have been captivated by the fact that I need TIME to read and to write
Lately I have been inspired by the idea that I will get through the unpaid month of working by perhaps not working and actualy doing the above..
Lately I have been dreaming of connecting people and countries on my own terms while pushing or my own women empowering discourse
Lately i realize I can't empower others without standing up for myslef
that this is not being selfish, this is not excusing myself for having to pay my rent, this is what I might just as well deserve..
and that I am not going to be anyone unless I believe that I myself deserve to get credit for being phenomenal...and this is not being selfish.

But I had to erase the Maya peom as found it a bit too cheesy for my taste.

But I believe that believing thin things turning out alright is being half way there...I try to remember this.

The Unreported News from India

2007-04-29T01:36:00.000+02:00

There is still such an incredible institution called United Nations. Its processes are frustrating, not only because 200 countries need to reach a consensus in order to do something but mostly because if a very few oppose the actions of others the "it" is blamed for disfunction. Never the governments that make the decisions that lead to dysfunction...The idealistic United Nations system also continues to have its specialized agencies such as the one with the ambitious yet underminded mandate to fight hunger and promote rural development... It is called FAO and it continues to attempt to sometimes try to fulfill its mandate...against all of the gossip that you have no right to decide what to grow or what to eat...

Last week FAO had two Committees...one on the commodities (probably not a blog word..) and another on agriculture... Do you remember the mandate?

So here is the NEWS from India...The one of greatest importance to me. This one makes me want to work to help people understand that these non immediate processes in our immediate media culture can make a difference.

Hardworking women hungry for change

As Sharad Pawar, India’s minister for agriculture, sits down in Rome this week, ActionAid hopes that women like Kamala and Rambati will be at the forefront of their minds. Kamala and Rambati are making determined steps towards ending hunger by ensuring women in their villages have land titles and a say in decisions which affect their lives. But they need support from Mr Pawar and his counterparts if this is to translate into widespread and enduring change.

As the main food producers, women’s access to land and natural resources is a key factor in eradicating hunger and rural poverty, but progress on this front remains erratic and inadequate. Decades of discrimination have also placed women firmly amongst the poorest of the poor. By adopting recommendations from numerous international forums since the 1996 World Food Summit, the 20th session of the Food and Agriculture Organisation Committee on Agriculture in Rome this week could be a crucial step towards concerted governmental action on the issue.

In India the need for action is clear. Some 70% of the female workforce is engaged in agriculture yet only 10% of women farmers own land. At the same time one in four Indians go to bed hungry.
India’s Land Reform Act passed in 1954 shortly after independence, addresses land rights for dalits and other marginalised groups. But it makes scant mention of women and anyway has not been implemented. Since the mid-70s, calls for women’s land rights gained strength with social movements such as Bodhgaya in Bihar at the forefront. In 1977, mass mobilization and judicial intervention led to a landmark ruling paving the way for joint pattas (land titles) in the name of both men and women. Currently India has a patchwork of Acts guiding women’s property and land rights in line with different religious and customary practices. Laws vary from state to state and between caste, religion and ethnic group. Yet none of them succeed in meeting women’s constitutional right to equal and non-discriminatory access to these means.As a result, women and children are being left destitute or at best in highly unequal bargaining positions within the family and wider community.

The situation is compounded by neo-liberal growth model which has widened the gap between haves and have-nots and put women and men in the firing line. Nandigram where at least 14 people lost their lives threw a stark spotlight on community struggles to protect land from being grabbed for Special Economic Zones. Women in Jagatsingpur district of Orissa are still guarding barricades to prevent government officials from taking over their villages for South Korean steel giant POSCO.

Meanwhile in the village of Nuaput, in Koraput district of Orissa, Adivasi women are taking their own small steps towards land ownership. Supported by ActionAid through local organisation SPREAD, villagers have applied for joint pattas so that both husband and wife have a legal claim on the land they use. Kamala Matan explains the significance: “This patta gives us strength. We don’t fear the men now – they can’t threaten us with throwing us out (of the home) now,” she says.
“Other people can learn from us… When we get the patta we can claim land and after us, our children will inherit.”

In the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh, 35-year-old Rambati an emerging leader in the poverty-stricken Sahariya community (a primitive tribal group in which men typically marry twice) shares her concerns: “If the government doesn’t give ownership of land to women, what will happen to the first wife? How will she manage her and her children’s lives? In 1995 the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh announced pattas for tribals and landless labourers in the state. Since then, partly due to persistent demands from local women, joint land titles are slowly increasing. Despite this favourable legislation, many Sahariyas are still struggling for their land entitlements. Nandigram where at least 14 people lost their lives highlighted women’s part in ongoing community struggles to protect land from being grabbed for Special Economic Zones. Women in Jagatsingpur district of Orissa are still guarding barricades to prevent government officials from taking over their villages for South Korean steel giant POSCO. While local women’s groups are having some success in securing land titles and national level dialogue between concerned citizens is underway – including an innovative initiative Consult for Women and Land Rights which encourages women to mobilize around land issues – this needs to be matched by further action at regional and international levels.

ActionAid has written to G77 agriculture ministers - the largest group of developing countries in the United Nations – urging them to use their voice in Rome and beyond to support specific measures including convening intergovernmental regional roundtables on women’s rights to land and natural resources and establishing an database system on land tenure and agrarian reforms to capture the global picture and monitor progress. In India activists are also calling for a review of laws related to women’s land and property rights and collective land ownership, accompanied by affirmative action to implement policies and practices that will help women tackle hunger and poverty.

Notes to editor
1. The Government of India has acknowledged that improved access to land and natural resources, especially by women, is a key factor in eradicating hunger and rural poverty in the framework of international commitments at World Food Summit 1996 and its Plan of Action; in the Voluntary Guidelines on the Implementation of the Right to Food unanimously adopted by FAO Council; and most recently at the FAOs International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) that was hosted by Brazil in March 2006.

2. The 20th session of the FAO Committee on Agriculture meets in Rome 25-28 April 2007.

Returning to Botswana

2007-04-17T12:18:00.000+02:00

I came back to Botswana after little less then 2 years since my first vist in June 2005. I came back two years later maybe a little calmer, a little older, a little wiser (?) and most definitely much much more sober. I was begging Gina to please take me back to the land near Mokolodi where during one cold African night in the bush we have turned liver-destruction into pure art form and a movement... Unfortunately, the original "EAPS" founding group is slightly dispersed at the moment. Goddess bless our Chairman whose 2 year long failure in establishing a proper website for the group is fully excused by his current work with MSF in Chad helping Darfur's refugees. http://www.hodder.whereareyou.net/

Jokes apart, it is not only about being in Botswana but about being in Botswana with Gina. I adore her because she is smart, fun, honest, real...She is my true co-conspirator, my Thelma and my Louise, but most importantly a good friend with whom I can discuss the Economic Partnership Agreements, relationship woes, and who above all understands the importance of a good pedicure before a walking safari.

What I also adore about the idea of living in Gabarone is arriving at the airport 20 minutes before the plane leaves and not being the least troubled by the possibility of missing it. So yes, after late night Friday mini-EAPS celebrations, we departed on Saturday at 8 am to Maun in Okavango Delta.

Here is the luxurious tent where we slept:

And here are some pictures... Can you locate the elephant?

The hidden Diva within

2007-04-13T19:26:00.000+02:00

I am really not Mina nor youtube obsessed but...

Watching her sing makes it alright to be dramatic, emotional, proud..

She is stunning, powerful, authentic, dramatic, diva.

Viva Mina. You make heartache feel grande. You are THE DIVA.

back on my motorino

2007-04-13T18:34:00.000+02:00

It was an emotionally difficult landing after a great trip to Botswana and Johannesburg. The stories are all stored within me and are just waiting for a better moment to be published...

Overwhelmed with this constant lack of certainty with regard to my future. No, not scared or afraid of uncertaintly but perhaps enjoying the certainty of the things I love. Such as driving my motorino being one of the most healing experiences.
Driving with my mp3 player on.

Today, driving through Garbatella...thinking of Nanni Moretti on his vespa.. Laughing to myself at the lines of the film I used to watch several times many, many years ago before I even knew where Garbatella was.

And you can't understand this because the person i want to take on the ride doesn't have dsl. Yes, my colleagues from India don't believe that there are places in the heart of Tuscany without dsl connection.

My disoriented Tuesday night back home realizing I don't even have any coffee in my cupboards and then my neighbours open up their windows and sing out laud "Grazie Roma". This was their reaction to loosing to Manchester United. I didn't know about the game, I just heard them sing and couldn't help but to smile to myself and say "Thank God am back in Rome".

So here is the ride through Garbatella... wishing to find my man to take him on the ride...again..

And maybe just like Nanni we could also enter one of the houses, just to see, tell them we are making a film...And when they ask what the film is about, then we'll say it is about a Marxist owner of local pasticceria living in the conformist 1950's, in Garbatella... A musical.. Where is my partner in crime??? Yes, I know everyone in Garbatella knows this line.. but what has happened with being a little crazy?

Snow in Heidelberg

2007-03-23T19:20:00.000+01:00

Two days in Heidelberg and arrived here not exactely knowing what wil be the next country where I will spend my nights in: South Africa or Malawi? No, I will be going straight to more meetings in Johannesburg as thank God I need a visa for Malawi.. Am tired of this constant readiness for work related adventures..

Yesterday was the first day of Spring, the Equonox and after warm winter I find Heidelberg covered with that white poweder I missed this winter... The witch in me misses the forgotten slow arrival of Spring...

http://www.ciae.ntu.edu.tw/chinese/newsletter_3/heidelberg%20snow.jpg

A few moments looking at the contrast between blooming spring and the melting snow... Another few minutes thinking to myself what it would be like to grow up in this perfect small German town... What are the lifes of people who have normal jobs and families? Do they feel the angst to get away from it or are they aware how prescious this tranquilty can be? Suddenly the idea of living in a small town and of having a more normal job without the objective of saving the world seems appealing.

Sunday morning I will wake up in Johannesburg...I love traveling but hotel meeting rooms, however fascinating the meetings, make me feel sometimes as though this is my second home. To succeed in what I am doing I need that home base with someone waiting for me with a cooked dinner.

Am looking forward to going back to Africa...

Having Faith

2007-03-15T15:15:00.000+01:00

......And sometimes it becomes just so difficult to believe that having "faith" alone will get us through the difficult times. Faith is such an intangible concept, so ethereal, and so confounding when you dismiss any form of religious fundamentalism.

To have faith, to have trust in the world, to believe in the good in others... How difficult to cultivate faith in the face of all the injustice, all the wars, the momentary sense of powerlessness and despair.

.....AND THEN MUSIC ENTERS MY WORLD...

…she gives me a warm embrace, she carries me, she gives me strength, she guides me and restores my faith. SHE!, LA MUSICA; MUZYKA.

.. .. And when I doubt why I am working for a smaller salary then back in New York City, then I am reminded that I am where I need to be, that I am making my contribution of faith in the humankind. And I thank Jovanotti for inspiring my passionate love for the Italian language, for seducing me with his music back in the cold lights of New York City walking with my walkman through the endless underground corridors of the dark metro stations. And now with my mp3 player, years later, he reminds me to have faith. And Rome is simply beautiful when the wind blows in my face as Lorenzo sings to me when I drive my little motorino... Yes, as much as I love tomatoes it was more then the hunger for taste that brought me to Rome. It was also hunger for music with meanigful lyrics... Thank you Lorenzo for seducing me with your serenatas rap... Thanks to myself for having faith to follow your music.

Here she is, for all of you my friends, listen....

This is Ashtanga Yoga

2007-03-11T23:41:00.000+01:00

For those who ask: this is ashtanga yoga. Isn't beautiful? .....Depending on how much time I will devote to it, depending on how much discipline I will gain, depending on how much courage I will have to let go of fear and how open I will be to change - maybe in a few years from now I will get the elegance of some of these magic postures..

This was a very stressful week as the eclipse has stirred up so much in store...and I am still learning how to take care of myself in the mist of the job that is swollowing all of my energies. All I am thinking is how angry I am that I will loose time from practice during my upcoming travel and how to squeeze in a mat into my luggage.

This weekend I detoxed (relatively as the concept is still new) and attended a marvelous yoga workshop at my Ashtanga Yoga school.

LIFE BEGINS WITH A LUNAR ECLIPSE

2007-03-05T17:21:00.000+01:00

And so I have graciously turned 30 years old.

I began counting my blessings with sarcastic satisfaction of a pagan goddess/witch/samba dancer and decided to write a love letter to my evil twin sister before the lunar eclipse that was to accompany my birthday's celebrations. I wanted to meditate naked under a waterfall reliveing my last days of childhood, but instead was interrupted by phonecalls from Spain and Turkey reminding me that I (and my evil twin sister) are both very much loved. Since life begins at 30 I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of giving myself another chance. I dreamed of stealing the peaches of immortality from a dragon guarding the entrance to the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant near Santa Maria Maggiore. I want to relieve the PRESENT feeling of being blessed and 30!

As if suddenly good karma has come back... Basking in friendship and love. Thankful to live in Rome where boys at the bar where I get my coffee everydays since 3 years give me flowers (would that have happened in the starbucks to which you go everyday???) Maybe happy to be in Rome and not traveling in foreign lands, happy to be able to be with those whom I love. And thankful, immensely thankful to have so many good people in my life..

Yes, this one is a big blessing. Thank you for making me a moon child!

And here are some pictures from the celebration with/of people I love:
http://photos.yahoo.com/magdalena_original

No More Snow

2007-02-12T23:31:00.000+01:00

I hate Valentines. I hate February. I hate chocolates. Most of all, most of all I hate long winters without snow.

Here I sit with a second bad cold in the past 2 weeks which I don't cure because I still work from home instead of curling up under warm sheets with a cup of warm tea. .I realize that the world won’t fall apart if I just let go, but I will fall apart if I let the winter blues take over.

And the world is falling apart. It has been such a long winter without snow... Kapuscinski books no longer keep me warm with their descriptions of African sun, samba from Rio no longer soothes my saudade filled soul.

What has happened to the snow? I spend December in rain covered Portugal, Warsaw without the hazy shades of dreamy white powder, no frost cracking under my feet... And Rome with its moonsoon rains making me catch terrible colds on my scooter. Yes, I laughed and smiled and danced when I saw snow for the very first time this winter. I woke up last Thursday morning in the silence of the beautiful B&B owned by a sweet Belgian artist - it felt as if I woke up inside his painting. Standing watching the snow fall on Brussels through wide, huge windows. How ironic, the Polish girl goes to Brussels to see the very first snow this winter. By the evening the snow has melted, but at least I still had the rare luxury of taking a soothing bath inside the painting.

It has been a first time in two years that I haven't gone to Sri Lanka or Brazil to break the long, winter blues working under the steaming sun. I cherished being still, but not in the winter where moonsoon like rains have replaced the little beauty that winters bring... And I never really loved winters – climate being the most often cited reason for the “what are you doing in Rome?”

And what has happened with the time when I used the long winter nights to write? In which translation have I lost myself?

This, I think, is the only good poem I wrote...May it remind me that snowless Roman days used to make me write. May it remind me that even in Rome there used to be beautiful frost in the mornings... May it remind me that my heart has healed.

Roman Frost
24-01-2004

Misty moist frost breaking the structure of my bones
As morning sun fills spaces between antique ruins of human desire
I listen to gypsies sing the same Russian song
On the tram stuck in the raining confusion of Rome
Late to work late to work late to work
Late to begin anew because I belong
I belong to my memories of la dolce vita summers
I belong to the chaos eternal of inevitable traffic jams

Wind from the Castelli mountains carries
Answers to the riddles of forgotten witches and gods
Answers rise like bubbles to some vast horizontal plane
Where oxygen changes form.

Across the table I warm myself
At his eyes’ transparent fire
How grizzled his eyebrows are
Underlining the black quick lines of no repeated
This is what love means: returning where you can breathe.

I refused at my return from deserts’ vast spaces
At my return from white silence of snow covered birthplace
The difficulty presented by any instance of contact
Homecoming month later breaking the surface:
Inhaling - shaking my head in wonder.

Because days now I knew
I must give up wanting him
Resolved not to offer more unguarded smiles
On the terrace I moved upwind from his cigarette
To move away from his intense eyes and break with discontinuity.

His affection is huge violating a fixed boundary
Violating the resolve of his own contradictions
Violating the safety stones he drops with each sentence
Keeping it all in the realm of inevitable erotic clash.

And I leaned into his touch as if it were home
To end it speaking about unfeasibility
Months and days it seemed of making love later
As moist cold Roman winter pierced me with pain.

As frost sets on dead trenches of elegant Cyprus trees
I belong to the stones that witnessed my bliss and ache
The mouth of truth where I held my hands in marriage lies
The frozen water in the fountain where I worshiped my youth.

"We'll always have Lisbon"

2007-01-23T01:23:00.000+01:00

- he said. Then I was left in Coimbra with my fado and Lisbon on my mind.
Oh, this one is an irrelevant entry written on an irrelevant night, just celebrating that I was in Lisbon when the moon was just as young.

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them. (Secret: #36)
RUMI

WARSAW lost in translation...

2007-01-08T22:10:00.000+01:00

Warsaw is home. But what is home if I lived away from this capital of suddenly remembered state for, now, most of my life? Is it going back to the twisted beauty and the richness of my slavic-latinized tongue? I try to explain to my English boyfriend that we have about 100 ways to say the word cat = KOT. But nobody says "kot" unless you are a veterinarian... My parents' big black cat - Zulus - he is so big he is a "kocur"...Yet my mother calls him "kociu", "kiciu", "kociaczku", "kiciuniu", "kiciaczku", "kiciulku", "kocinko moja"... It is in the lost in translations ways that my friends and I address each other when we meet after years over a few too many glasses of beer, our lifes twisted with time and circumstances but the friendships still the same. It is in our sense of pride, the history of my ravaged city reconstructed only with the sheer force of love and perseverance... And then about watching as an outsider how the insane capitalist drive takes the better and the best of us. We have always been the nation of survivors, the in -between of Germany and Russia with an older statehood then both. Now, given the chance, we are proud to show off what we are capable of..

I experience Poland as an inside-outsider. For I am Polish - not only because this is the only citizenship I hold for which I curse the current Polish powers to be for their shortsighted inability to integrate with Europe. Poland is young. Poland has children. This strikes you if you live in Italy. Poland, though, to me, is not about its landscapes but about the Poles. We are tragically irrational in our capacity or rather incapacity for dealing with foreign affairs - the stigma of the Iron Curtain’s fall less then 20 years ago. Romantically carried away, we say what we mean, hence the English diplomacy is fails us all. Yet, comparing us to Russians with whom we share the "Slavic souls" is wrong for we are too straightforward in comparison. Uncapable of the Russian grand scale skimming perhaps because we are just too democratic in the sense that no Pole would allow another Pole to rule over him unconditionally. "Freedom" is the word to which too many Polish rock songs have been dedicated to. Economy is booming and I see my old country transforming with the force of the young people unafraid to take risks. What a difficult past we have had: it is refreshing to think of our 18-year-old MTV generation that doesn't remember any of the communist education. Yet, at the same time disturbing to see them raised in the mindset forgetful of what we and who we are. I am sad, very sad to see our political system being played out in terms of domestic divisiveness for the sake of power and not for the sake of what is good for the country. Yet, I know it will pass because the young generation, however MTV it is, will not fit into the Catholic fascism of the current, short-lived, stage. It is just sad to see that the Polish politicians are destroying our potential, that everything is suddenly defined in anti-communist terms forgetful of the fact that we have had a Soviet imposed system which is currently denying us the capacity for a healthy social democracy. At the end, it is the frustrations of lack of social state that led the right wing to reign. So I hope that one day I can be a liberal Polish leftist without accusations of Soviet sympathies.

Home. Home is in my language. Not politics. Home is my dog and my cat, my friends who show up in a small bar in Warsaw to be together. Home is a place where friends give me their skates so that I don't have to rent them out when I go ice-skating. Home is our dinners, home cooked, our immense and overbearing hospitality. Where everyone makes homemade liquors, where food is love, where conversations are filled with intense passion and laughter. Home is where people call me by my name. Home is where people argue through a series of articles over the meaning of postmodern Polish art...

Home is Warsaw. Being away means romanticizing it and we know that romantic means Polish. THis time, the very first Polish Christmas without snow was still romantic...even if less visual. Maybe a little lonely becuause what I hate about Poland is that if you are not married with children then you are not eligible to be happy as a 30 year old Polish woman on Polish political terms. But these are the terms imposed by a Polish minority. And I am happy.

Running Away from Uncertainty

2006-12-01T22:08:00.000+01:00

Sitting in my house as my beloved Canadian-Italian friend just left: the bottle of wine opened, my bedroom a mess again as I am slowely getting ready to pack, the damn e-mail not working on my damned outlook as I am desperatly trying to shoot the last work e-mails. The picture above, made by an incredible woman who lives in Madrid and who spend some time with me in Brazil, Riga and in Rome, is the reason why I am pondering over the future of my Roman flat. For this is the time I get to have a home on my own expat basis: the widnows and the doors are always opened to the visits of my friends, past and future.

As I am sitting here I am wondering if my dear friend Bachus will come back from Canada in time to still see me sit in the same apartment, will I be in Rome or will I have to take the matters in my hands and eventually move to a different part of the world? "I love Rome" is the mantra I repeat daily, but making my life here is becoming increasingly difficult... December will not see much of me in Rome whereas it is Rome that it is all about: trying to stay here. I have been fired and hired several times past weeks by the same organization without my knowledge as it is all about the fight for next year's budget within the divisive politics of North-South dynamic over the future of a person that is neither from the "West" nor from the "South". These weeks of demotivation and uncertainty about my work have been a blessing and a gift. I have had a rare chance to explore my new neighborhood, to spend time with my beloved Roman friends, to live a more "normal" life.

I hope that Portuguese Fado will heal. Hopefully the works side of the Portuguese trip will be less dramatic.

This orchidea was all about the rare moments of being still... Still as in not down nor depressed, just still. Admiring its beauty. I thank Sonia for this picture.

Yes, all the pictures in this blog are my pictures hence each time I use those of others I give due credit...

In Chianti Veritas

2006-11-22T19:03:00.000+01:00

What's so romantic about this Tuscan grape obsession? They need your desperate care whole year round. Each month of the year is defined by the almighty power of "the vines" in transforming the Chianti's scenery. So innocent, bare and naked in January - the non tourist season - when you can admire their artisticly twisted roots holding on to the wires. So needy, even in the cold February mornings, out there in the vineyard you make sure each and single one of them is trimmed to perfection. The barren landscape suddenly shows signs of life around March - the green leafs begin to shoot out as the sunsets begin setting later into the day. Then you are hit by the indecent freshness of the green colours of the Spring.. The green so intense that it makes your head spin under the bright rays of mid May sunshine as the grapes intoxicate you with the taste of that newly bottled Chianti Classico from the last year's vintage.

And when all the organic chemistry of Spring turns into the Summer, the vineyards are wild, the green grape leafs cover hectars of land while the fruit is slowely forming under the unberably hot Tuscan sun... And then you worry and wait. You wait and hope that the rain will not last too long in September, that the temperature will be just right to allow the purple Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet to arrive in all their health and glory for the picking season. The Vendemmia.

Though I have only picked one day this year, I have lived from October to October through the agonies of the winemaker's life. All I know is that 2006 is a very good year for the Il Borghetto Chianti... Oh, the climate change sensitive labour...

And now, as the wine is being pressed in November, all I know is that I regret that I couldn't spend more days picking these beautiful grapes from this small homerun winery... Instead, I was busy trying to remind the world that humanity has failed to deal with hunger. Reminding, that if we could devise a more lausy way to distribute food, we couldn't do better then now. The economics of agricultural polcies, the food politics where farmers have no voice.. But at the end of the day, the best conversations between Mexican activists from Oaxaca and Indians from Rajahstan, Spaniards from Madrid and Italians from Milan, French from Brittany and Mozambiquans farmers, Brazilians from RIo and Kenyans from Nairobi- were the ones held over the glass of wine...

In vino veritas.. In Chianti veritas.

Salute.

I will always have Paris

2006-10-16T14:30:00.000+02:00

the city that awakes my Polish melancholic heart and makes it breathe...Only Paris in September, even in just two days, can fill me up with poetry to last. Too little time in between work related meetings but enough to visit my two favourite couples...
One cooks me an evening meal and listens patiently to the stories of my confused heart...I am reminded that American expat women who move from Rome to Paris have depth, courage and wisdom they share freely with younger expat sisters...

I visit another couple early in the morning at Montparnasse..Simone and Jean Paul.

The Death of Lovers
We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,
Divans as deep as graves, and on the shelves
Will be strange flowers that blossomed for us
Under more beautiful heavens.

Using their dying flames emulously,
Our two hearts will be two immense torches
Which will reflect their double light
In our two souls, those twin mirrors.
Some evening made of rose and of mystical blue
A single flash will pass between us
Like a long sob, charged with farewells;

And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,
Faithful and joyous, will come to revive
The tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.

Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Smell the Spice - Get Over BBS in Turkey

2006-09-13T17:34:00.000+02:00

This is in praise of TURKEY which restored my faith in magic. This is my outcry against all of the silly headlines asking holiday makers to stay away from this magical land. If you have courage to go visit London, then trust me, statisticaly you are far less likely to die in a bomb blast in Turkey.

The Blocked Blogger Syndrome (BBS)

2006-09-13T16:52:00.000+02:00

I have been recently called the world's worst blogger. Apparently, my attempt to begin blogging and therefore to keep that sacred connection with the community of bloggers, was an unacceptable tease given my inability to update regularly.

Forgive me for occasionaly suffering from the BSS (the blocked blogger syndrome) due to my increased fear of producing too much blogging BS. My "blogging block" florishes in direct proprotion to the intensity with which I live and work. Hence, the "no time to blog" excuse while at the same time the subjects which I would wish to explore further seem simply endless... I dream of running away from my action job at www.actionaid.org and from the endless chaos of Roman streets - naive thinking that in silence of countryside I will find writing time. But what if I will find the time, if I will not find the inspiration?

Obviously there is the problem of being IT challenged as the flat where I currently live is simply not internet connected (here is the picture of my URBAN view with the famous gazometro in the background). As I spend most of my waking hours in the internet/e-mail mania of my office - I feel the need to restore eyesight and sanity by coming back home to stare outside of the window rather then back into the computer screen. As long as I will write from the office you will be forced to read angry venting against inner office politics, staggering statistics of child malnutrition, critiques agains the current food aid system or my outcry about the forgotten rural world, loss of biodiversity and the destruction of farmer's livelihoods in the South by the North's dumping of its subsidized products. I can't resist here to mention that 2007 will mark the first time that the percentage of people living in the cities will suprass those living in the country. No, my dear patient readers, this is NOT A GOOD NEWS. This is not the good news, because the majority of those who move from rural areas into the cities simply join the scores of living in the ghettos, favelas and shantytowns on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kampala, New Delhi or Lagos. Not a good news, because our mode of producing food is no longer sustainable (have you heard of the concept of food miles???) and because IT WILL ONLY EXCEBARATE MALNUTRITION and aid dependency. It will be easier to access "urban hungry" with food aid rather then to invest in sustainable, long term rural development...

You see, I couldn't resist.

As you imagine FOOD, WINE and the problem of HUNGER remain my passion for which I have unexhausted capacity for venting. But I wanted to vent about being an expat in the urban territory of Rome, occasionaly transported to the rural territory of Tuscany. I wanted to vent about the white night of Rome (the official end of the summer), about expats quests for obtaining residence with the Italian QUESTURA. I wanted to write about my FAT TURKISH VACATIONS and about my friend's engagement party..

My BSS syndrome though results from my disorganized mind when it comes to my creative endevours. As my winemaking boyfriend put it (bless him) to compare my mind to a country: "your mind works like India: overpopulated by chaotic ideas, sometimes brillaint, sometimes dramaticaly inefficient"

The best way to get over my case of BSS is to acknowledge the India within and write freely....

......am I over my BBS you think????

Gratitude...

2006-06-20T18:03:00.000+02:00

"Spiritual growth is about confronting fear in order to attain wonderment" so says my "women's spirit daily meditation book".
There were days during my one particular work adventure at a certain institution, when I needed my daily meditation book more then a cigarette in order to keep some levels of hope and sanity. It worked. It enbeled me to find something wonderous about each of those days in which my life was going through complete transition and I needed to let go all fear in order to be able to throw my arms around the concept of complete and utter uncertainty. As short time of unemployment followed, I kept on repeating Anais Nin's mantra "LIFE SHRINKS AND EXPANDS IN PROPORTION TO ONE's COURAGE." Now, I am GRATEFUL to have met many wonderous women who perhaps have never read this quote, but lived there lives accordingly. They are my inspiration today, as I am sitting in front of my computer, feeling a bit lost within the matrix of work related e-mails and heavy with the first wave of that true Roman heat. Uncertainty is always difficult...but also liberating not to know exactely what will happen at the next turn...

This philosophical psycho bubble is the result of driving my scooter under 38 celcius midday heat feeling as my brain is risking damage under the 50 celcsius heated up helmet...

but then I got that wind blowing in my face...
and a sense of trust.

This is just to acknowledge how happy I am to be alife, to be where i am, to be in Rome on this warm summer day. Yes, to even be in the air conditioned office.

EAPS one year anniversary since the desert race in Botswana, june 2005

2006-06-16T15:20:00.000+02:00

THIS IS JUST TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE 1 year anniversary since the first EAPS MEETING in Botswana, 2005. May we continue spreading the goals of our mission statement with the same zeal in the future years!

Following the Flow and the Future Features

2006-06-16T14:02:00.000+02:00

No. If you hoped that this blog was left off to die together with other crudely abandoned blogs, which started with that sudden courage of exhibitionism in the age of individualism of the masses – you were mistaken. It wasn’t a blog that began with the “oh well, everyone now has a blog, so will I” need to advertise myself. It was just an inner compulsion to find time to write again… To find time to write pieces which do not contain words such as “objectives” or “food security” or “project cycle” as its main vocabulary.

My absence was due to an overly intense engagement with the flow of life. I have myself been accused of intensity many a times, but in this case I have my job, my long distance relationship and searching for an apartment in Rome all to blame… In the past month I went to Liverpool, London, Milan, Riga (yes the amazing capital of Latvia) and to Warsaw. I have also visited my country boy in Tuscany and moved apartments in Rome… Now, it was the moving in combination with my unsustainable workaholic ngo job and travel that simply turned past month into virtual blogging absence…

Not that there weren’t many subjects…The following titles passed through as possible entries to the RANTING EXPAT and some will be elaborated upon in the not too distance future.

“Mourning Testaccio” – on how this Roman neighbourhood and my urban patio have grown on me in the period of past two years. How much I will miss Franco from the coffee bar next door which looks like a 70s disco never mind my old neighbour screaming at her husband each morning “get up before the market will close”. Luckily, the tomatoes stand at the Testaccio market is still only a few minutes away on the scooter…

“Ode to Shriaz Limoncello” – still to come. A short story about a certain Pakistani woman’s legacy of expat bonding through her art of limoncello making. Andi, your limencello is also to blame for my inability to stay late at night to update my so called blog…while in mourning my urban patio with Lynda phase…

Which brings me to:

“EAPS.” It has been a year now since birth was given to this little expat organization during one, long night in the middle of the desert in Botswana (all to blame on Limoncello). The outgoing chairman promised to overlook the making of a webpage, but we were all too busy and frankly too drunk to take proper minutes from this historic meeting and so the organization was left without tools to make the Chairman responsible for full delivery of his mandate. He did send though several “reminder” meetings but it seems that the next reunion will take place under the Tuscan sun… The acronym of the organiztion “EAPS” will not be explained until proper webpage will be developed. For a teaser, yes, the E stands for EXPATand the “A” for Limoncello…but also for beer, and gin…

Which brings me to:

“On Britishness” – just when I began writing this piece when visiting my boyfriend’s family in Liverpool and attending yet another meeting in my beloved London, I realized I was outsmarted yet again. There I was sitting on the train from Liverpool to London reading my favourite newspaper, of course THE GUARDIAN, noticing that certain Lucy Mangan has gotten it all down in her brilliant article “What it realy meant to be British?” Since as a Pole I am unqualified to write on this subject, if you want to learn it all about snobbery, insularity, anti-intellectualism, self-deprecation, humour, repression, politeness, nostalgia and slobbery – just click awayhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,1775681,00.html
All of this in the engaging, elegant style that makes as love (and in my case fall in love) with the British for being so self deprecating about being British. Only nations with a well developed sense of identity and self-esteem can fathom such mature gaze into their own demons. My only note is that I hardly think that anti-intellectualism is a British product – we all suffer from it in the age of mass media, mass blogging age…

Then in the past two weeks I moved my house thanks to the help of my wonderful Spanish roommate (ode to roommates and to Spanish guitars and to American women in Rome to follow), brilliant Ethiopian intern, American friend and English boyfriend. Next day I was boarding a plan to Riga, Latvia (GODDESS BLESS THE BALTIC STATES) to only come back to Milan, pass by my boyfriend’s house in Tuscany and finally steal a moment of time to write this entry from my internet disconnected new home…

Namaste. I didn’t make it to yoga for weeks now.

If this was an intense reading, the moving on my own will hopefully induce a bit of poetry writing attempts.

The Ranting Begins

2006-05-08T12:29:00.000+02:00

Expat. Expatriate. We like the sophisticated word "expat" especially whenit is pronounded with the slighly French accent. Makes one feel remotely linked to the likes of Hemingway, Anais Nin or David Sadaris. The dictionary defines the word EXPATRIATE as "2.. to leave one's country and reside in another" and the word IMMIGRANT as "one who leaves one country to settle in another" - I think that Webster's is missing out completely on the subtlelity of perceptions and attitudes conveyed in usage of these seemingly interchangable and yet such different words. To me the word expat on some subconscious level conveys the idea of free will, of choice, of leaving for some personal reason, of not having necessarily been constrained by political or economic necessity... Another words of having been blessed enough to have had a choice or stupid enough to choose for yourself self-imposed exile. For the romantic notion of "expat" is brutally murdered by the first definition from the damned Webster's. It says, bear with me because I am really not obsessed with definitions, that the word EXPATRIATE means "1. to send into exile." Only Poles in the 19th century Poland have created a romantic and patriotic notion of the word "exile" when the country ceased to exist under brutal partition by Prussia, Russia and Austria. So Chopin could get away with living in France as long as he composed Polonaises and still be deemed a patriot. These times are over. Now one has to have a damn good explaination for deciding to live abroad. Great, well paid job is usually what works to assure your loved ones back home that you are on the right track. So I decided to start this website in order to make my motive of moving to Italy official: my utter, irrational love of tasty tomatoes. There are also secondary motives: the climate, beautiful landscapes, the sounds of the church bells, the sense made out of chaos of Roman traffick and above all the other expats who call themesleves expats and understand your lust for tomatoes. These reasons alone are enough to make one endure bizarre living arrangements , frequent moves, Italian bureaucracy and learning how to be comfortable with label of "the other". So here. My ranting is only about to begin... but now I have to get back to my work in order to try to save the taste of Italian tomatoes while officially ranting about the unsustainability of our global food system. aha. And tonight I will have a tomatoe salad.