· SHOW, don’t TELL. Ask open questions; seek information through all roads to Rome.
· MESOmanage: do not interrupt the flow of an intervention or interview with comments/critiques/suggestions. Don't get in the habit of feeding leading questions, so that your colleague always turns to you for approval or permission.
· Even minor comments/critiques/suggestions should be made out of sight and earshot of your audience. Listen to yerself, Christine Murphy. You make the c/c/s in casual conversation much more often than you think.
· BE PRESENT: both mentally AND physically. SHOW people that these questions are important.
· Be mindful of the difference between LIKE and RESPECT. They are not incommensurable, but they are also NOT equivalent.
· DON’T SEND MIXED MESSAGES – e.g. inserting comments into the FO’s interview but not staying by his/her side.
· DON’T PATRONIZE. This also is flying under my radar. I thought I would try to keep out of my colleague’s hair, to let him have authority in our house-to-house checks. If I’m not in the house, what can I be doing? Why, learning words, dances, teasing… with the kids, one of my favorite intoxicants. Word choice not made lightly – I was being distracted, and delighted by this distraction. But it was distracting to my colleague, and to the women he was trying to interview. The idea of taking the kids to the side to play a game may work where there are rooms to houses, but the work changes when it’s all the same shared space. (R started asking kids about suspect cases, but after a while of my antics, they wouldn’t talk with him because they thought it was a game. Now, I don’t think that there’s no room for fun in learning. But how to address the issue of serious fun, of fun that’s important?)
· It’s such a funny thing to bring awareness to my everyday actions. I thought I received R’s criticisms well; nods and noises of assent, receptive body language, etc. But still I had to interrupt at one point, to explain that I was trying to let the FO work independently. Why that need? hmmm.
Tonight we bought a goat. For dinner, goat two ways. I wanted to be cooler about this. The bug-killing is an issue I’ve got to get over – malaria, scorpions, big spiders that don’t necessarily wish but can do me much harm. There was a spider scurrying away from the bucket(-shower)-stall in the beam of my headlamp earlier. Neither dry nor clothed, I had a wee bit of a flip. The scurry made him look like a scorpion, and I stomped him even as I apologized for sending him on to the next life. Buddhism! Under the bloody skin! And then he turns out to just be a big spider, and one who was running *away* from me at that. Poor form, Christine Murphy.
I put down four pieces of goat. Verb choice intended. Noel, who cooked, ate next to nothing. The problem of cooking, everyone agreed. Why? I asked. The smell….
My happy-animal philosophy drives smack up against real life in South Sudan. How do you slaughter a spooked goat humanely? Goats aren’t even supposed to be smart. Sigh. Thoughts, and a renewed appreciation that many of my vegetarian or lower-meat friends made their decisions based on the direct experience of what it takes to make meat.
Things I have used my Leatherman for since arriving:
Pliers: twisting out the beehive of heavy wire that once enclosed one of the bungee rigs of my army tent.
File: taking off the vicious curls of metal produced by same.
Knife: Mango, scored into a bitable checkerboard.
Wire clippers: For J, for securing my tent’s sides.
Serrated knife: cutting curtains out of my sheets, which led to my making a . Do, a deer, a female deer…
In other notes, all my dry red patches, on wrists, in elbows, crooked in the collarbone, are gone. Thank you, borehole water of South Sudan. Or is it the sweat? Dance yrself clean, Christine Murphy. La! Empiricism, how I miss the luxury of time you require.
[Since this night, I have killed my first scorpion, stamping with vigorous horror. Had to do it again only an hour later. Scorpions, you work in pairs! Mebbe you'll meet up for company on the long walk through the bardo.]
Four years on and off in Nepal, and the only Tibetan name I ever got was from two drunk middle-aged dudes at a teashop, one night late when I went in to buy some boiling water. Don’t remember what it was, just that the translation was something along the lines of “happy-go-lucky.” Somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to use this name in my truck with kids and moms, nor at the monastery office, so it just stayed a page in my old everything-book.
First day in the field, I get a Toposa name. What should we call her? Calls Julius/Nakarang to the crowd. Suggestions are pitched. Nabeyo? NaBEYo? NaBEYo! Clap clap clap NABEYO clap clap clap NABEYO clap clap clap NABEYO.
One woman brings me two little rosy-orange-but-unripe tomatoes. No no, Christine Murphy, these are the fruit you are named after. Na- is the lady prefix, -abeyo are these fruits. Miss Lady-Fruit. You are the same color, see? We all walk through the village, stilted huts that are mostly roof, and that in concentric layers of close thatch. The tip of each sways in its own direction, so that compounds look like the houses are busy with gossiping. One woman brought out another handful of Christine-fruits for me – This is how to eat them, she shows me (with vigor!): chew off the skin, spit it out. Worry it down to the kernel – now break that and eat the seed inside. There is also a dance and a song that involves jumping up and down, shown to me by two or three other old ladies. We are all delirious with laughter.
We look at the village books, ask questions; a baby grabs my shirt-shoulder in his fat, smudgy fist. Another woman bounces my boob and then points at her own. Perky v. pendulous, she frowns. No babies, I mime. Baby? All the way to my knees. We giggle.
The lightning in storms nearby lit up the dinnertable after dark.
