photo by Justin Ahrens of Rule29

I covet your faith. I’m not sure if that breaks any of the commandments or not. It probably breaks several. Still, I do.

My time with Life in Abudance was awesome for several reasons. One of them is that I had a chance to be around people with such strong faith.

I’m surely surrounded by others with such faith, but there is a separation of church and day-to-day life. I appreciate the separation. I don’t want others telling me what I should believe and I don’t want others telling others what they should believe. Religion and politics are in the “don’t go there” category for me. Unless I know someone is up for an honest and open discussion, I avoid them at all costs.

The last time I prayed, I think I was praying for a puppy dog. It’s been awhile.

Going into this trip with a Christian NGO, I knew that faith would be front and center. And at some point mine would be called into question. I wasn’t sure what to do. Do I stay in the closet and hope that I’m not called on to bless the food or share some spiritual insight? Or do I step off the plane, drop my bags and say, “The heathen has arrived” while making little devil horns with my fingers and flicking my tongue? Of course, I’m joking about the latter one, but honestly was I supposed to walk in and say, “I don’t have faith in Jesus like you do?” To me that’s like walking in to a room full of strangers and declaring who I voted for, or where I stand on abortion and gun rights.

Each night the group sat down and talked about the day’s events. These were deeply personal conversations. We talked about the children in the slums and when we thought of our own children it broke our hearts. Grown men were brought to tears (I’m looking at you Tonan).

But then they would talk about God and Jesus and about how what we had seen challenged and strengthened their own faith. That’s when I would go silent.

Gradually I was outted. Maybe it was when I dropped the quote: “To the hungry, food is God.” One of the team members pulled me aside and asked me, “Where do you stand on the whole faith thing?”

I answered honestly. I suck at being anyone else. And I was accepted. One of the team members said that he thought I was brave for coming on the trip. It really didn’t concern me that much. I’ve lived with and traveled with folks whose cultural and religious traditions were far more greater than my own, including Buddhists and Muslims. I was raised catholic – an altar boy in fact – and like to think that I shared the values and concern for the poor that all the others in the group did. We just had this one thing that we didn’t share. I relate to Jimmy Buffett, a former altar boy too, who now claims to be an altered boy.

I prayed more in that week in the slums of Nairobi than I have in any other in my life. The first prayer in the slums was led by Bruce, who is a pastor in Illinois. Along with two other team members we were crammed in a 10X10 shanty with a single mother and a few of her six kids. We bowed our heads, held hands, and Bruce began to pray.

By the time Bruce was done, my eyes were watering. It wasn’t some spiritual revelation that hit me, but it was just how beautiful and important prayer can be as a form of communication. We don’t sit down with strangers and loved ones alike and express how thankful we are for them, how much hope we have for them, and how much we love them. Heck, I don’t even think about those things myself nearly enough. The passion, compassion, and the honesty with which Bruce and later the other team members prayed touched me.

I didn’t mind the team members knowing about my faith, but I really didn’t want the families we visited to know. That’s when I was uncomfortable. Several times during my 24 hours in the slums, I was asked to bless meals. The first time I said, “I hear myself pray all the time. Why don’t we let someone else.” (Lying about praying has to be worse than coveting faith.) Of course, they insisted. Thankfully, I had learned from Bruce, Anna, Amanda, the Justins, Tonan, Von, Brian, Bob, Gus and Earnest how to pray.

I want the poor to have faith that tomorrow will be better and if not tomorrow, then maybe the next day, and if not in this lifetime then the one after. The mother of the family I spent the night with was a “prophetess.” She saw a future that was a better life for her and her family. She was also bulletproof, but that’s beside the point. When I walk around the slums of Nairobi, I hope that others see a tomorrow that is better than their today. No, I pray they do.

I was having a conversation with Justin, the US director of LIA, about some of these things and I mentioned how important I thought faith was for the poor. He misunderstood me and started talking about having faith in the poor. The poor possess ingenuity, a zest for life, a beauty that I can’t put my finger on, and great potential. That’s the saddest part of the slums. There is so much never realized potential.

Von, a member of our group who is an artist, would start drawing and kids would surround him. One day he was armed with a bag full of notepads and gave an impromptu art lesson. One of the kids was amazing. Von saw his potential and slipped him a few extra notepads and pens. He must have told him to keep drawing 30 times. That day Von’s greatest fear was that this kid would stop drawing. Von has faith in the poor as every team member among us now has, if we didn’t have it before.

I’m trying to figure out poverty for myself. I’ve written a book on it and I’m still not sure how I feel about the conditions in the slums, the discrepancy between the haves and have-nots. The other team members turn to God to make sense of it. That must be nice.

I totally covet their faith.

I’m thankful for having shared this experience with them. They taught me that it’s important to have faith in the poor and for the poor to have faith.

Amen.

Taken by Justin Ahrens

A billion people live in the slums of our world.

As one of the 5 billion that don’t, I think we have an obligation to at least know what life is like for the other 17% of humanity. So, I thought we would take a stroll together through the slums of Mathare.

Wait, you are going to wear those shoes? Are you sure? They look awfully white.

Man makes things in straight lines. The Mathera valley is anything but. The tin shacks, rickety antennas, rusting roofs, and winding paths are awkward an uneven, organic. Nature takes what’s given to it and makes what it can. People living in poverty do the same.

This path leads down the valley. It hurts my knees to take such large steps without anything to hang on to. I’m 31 with a bad set of knees and it’s a bit challenging. What about the old folks? Well, considering the average person lives to be 50 in Mathare, it’s not that big of a deal. Something else usually gets you before your joints fail completely. There aren’t any walkers or scooters here.

You’re asking me what you just stepped in? How am I supposed to know, you are the one who stepped in it. I told you that you shouldn’t have worn the white shoes.

There are puddles here. Lots of them. You can’t really call them water puddles or mud puddles because they are a mix of bathwater puddles, laundry puddles, pee puddles, and any other form of thing that oozes and runs from high places to low. You stepped in a slum puddle.

You’ll get used to the smell after awhile. Trust me, I’ve been sprayed by a skunk. The smell would never be canned and sold, sure, but I don’t think it’s bad as you think. You know how when you don’t like the way something tastes you hold your nose? Well, here in Mathera, if you don’t like the way something smells you can close your eyes and it won’t smell so bad. You won’t see the four-year-old boy dropping trowel, you won’t see the three little piles of poo next too each other, each unhealthier looking than the next. You won’t see food scraps, plastic, cardboard, and people in various stages of decomposition and degradation. You won’t see the screaming toddler on the ground kicking his feet after a painful fall, not looking for his mother because she’s not watching, dusting himself off and going about his unsupervised toddler business.

Speaking of the kids, just let them tug on your arms. They don’t see people like us that often. We have arm hair and they don’t. Anytime you meet someone with hair in a place where you never knew hair grew – or at least in such a quantity – it is natural to pet them. Enjoy it.

While you’re being petted, I recommend working on a few Swahili words, Jamba and Sassa both mean hi. You could also teach the kids how to thumb wrestle, how to pull your thumb off, or anything else with your hands that requires the movement of your hairy little digits.

Watch your step, it’s especially slick and steep here near the river. Yep, that’s not a river of Orange Crush splitting the valley. This isn’t Candy Land. In board games everyone plays by the same rules, everyone has the same chance of getting to Gumdrop Mountain before any other player, everyone has an equal chance to be a winner. Mathare is full of losers.

The people started at home – likely a surrounding province – moved to Nairobi “the land of opportunity,” and found themselves stopped in the Molasses Swamp with little hope of ever moving onward.

The river of Orange Crush is nearly worthless. It’s good for carrying waste of humans or from humans away. It can’t be used for drinking or washing. It damages homes when it floods. And the true test of any body of water to it’s usefulness, kids can’t/won’t play in it.

The bridge is a bit tricky. I’m sure you could build a better one with a $25 gift card to Lowe’s and 20 minutes. Still, there’s no other way to cross. Yes, it’s uneven. Yes, it bows beneath your weight. No it probably hasn’t been “inspected” since the last person walked across it and it didn’t break. But it didn’t break, so buck up and cross.

Welcome to the west side of Mathare. It’s pretty much like the east side so I’ll shut up now and you can soak up Mathare for yourself.

There is one last thing you should know: the folks on the west side think the folks on the east live tougher and more dangerous lives. In turn, the people on the east believe the same thing in reverse.

It’s our nature to think someone else always has it worse than us. In some instances, it’s healthy. But for you and me, who belong to the privileged 80% who don’t live in a slum, it’s anything but healthy.

In fact, it makes us sick.

Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor who plays the Most Interesting Man in the World in the Dos Equis commercials, loves Mexico.

On a recent flight on Frontier Airlines I read his “10 reasons I love Mexico” in the on-flight magazine Wild Blue Yonder. At the end of the list the editors added a short bio:

Turns out the veteran actor, who had roles on TV shows like Dallas and Dynasty–plus dozens more–may actually be just a bit more interesting than his commercial creation. Mr. Goldsmith’s next adventure is aboard his 47–foot sloop, which he plans to sail down to the Sea of Cortez to retrace John Steinbeck’s research journey in 1940.

It seems that Goldsmith just might suffer from The Most Interesting Man in the World Syndrome named after the character he brought to life. Sad irony.

The thing is, Goldsmith’s 10 favorite things about Mexico aren’t all that interesting. He loves the beach, people, mountains, etc. Boring! I thought I would rewrite them for him still using his “likes” but spicing things up a bit.

10 Reasons the Most Interesting Man in the World loves Mexico

1. I love the people.

The women want me and the men want to be me.

2. And SCUBA diving as well

I once taught a school of hammerhead how to hunt.

3. I adore the food

If you are what you eat, I’m a hot tamale and I’ll kick your ass and make your eyes water.

4. The Water

Sometimes I walk on it.

5. The Fishing is Wonderful

I pluck my chest hairs, weave them together to make the strongest fishing line known to man. I once caught a great white shark using my chest hair line. It only took 15 minutes to get the shark to the boat. By then my chest hair had grown back.

6. The Sun is Superb

I have no tan lines. In fact, I don’t tan at all. My natural color is dark and mysterious.

Also, my head of hair is so lush that it converts sunlight into oxygen via photosynthesis.

7. The Women are Voluptuous

The Most Interesting Man in the World doesn’t kiss and tell…oh wait…I do. The women break like so many waves upon my sandy shore before fading back to sea out of energy and satisfied that they reached the destination they longed for their entire lives.

8. I also like Copper Canyon

The copper tastes good and the canyon is fun to jump across.

9. And the Mountains

I once shed a tear in the mountains when I saw my amazingly handsome reflection in a stream. The tear landed on the dry ground and a palm tree sprouted. The tree was cut down and sold on eBay for $100,000. A jewelry box was carved from the tree and sold by Lloyd’s of London for $10,000,000. If you think about it, I could raise enough money to end world hunger with a few good tears. Too bad I have nothing to cry about.

10. And the baroness and exquisite loneliness of Baja California

If I don’t spend some alone time with my thoughts, they get jealous. So does the Baroness.

I thought I was a pretty cool little boy growing up.

I was tough. I jumped off the high dive at the pool when I was five.

I could take a hit. I beat up a girl on the bus. This might sound lame until I tell you that the girl was in third grade and I was in second and everybody knows that a third grade girl is like double the size of a second grade boy.

I learned to cuss at an early age, which of course strikes fear into the hearts of sissies and forces adults to suppress laughter and feign disappointment.

At the YMCA’s arcade, to the kid playing Frogger, my Frogger: “Get off my Mother-f*&cking game.”

He did and then I, without any quarters, proceeded to pretend to control the frog.

I drank. If you were over at my house playing cards with my parents and set your beer down and looked the other way, when you looked back I would be chugging it.

We could debate whether or not these things made me cool, but there is one thing for sure that didn’t…

I played library.

That’s right, library. My brother and I organized our bookshelves of Sesame Street, Disney, and Golden Books and then we checked them out to one another after reading them. We had some of my Mom’s books too. We lumped the V.C. Andrews together. The coolest cover was The Sword of Shannara. And the book that I most wanted to be seen reading was The Stone and the Flute because it was 864 pages long.

Late fees were noogies.

I’m not ashamed that we played library. The library in Union City, Indiana, was one of my favorite places. We’d go in with nothing, pay nothing, and walk out with armfuls of books. The smells were free too, and they were wondrous.

When we got home, I grabbed the books and snaked my way through the adjacent field of corn to where our clubhouse sat in a grove of trees. I would toss the books onto the elevated porch and then climb the ladder, unfold my mini lawn chair, and begin to read.

From my perch above the corn I traveled around the world and to different times and realities, only to be interrupted by a passing groundhog or my mom.

Mom would come out with a freshly made PB&J and glass of milk. She could’ve just handed the sandwich to me, but instead she went to the back of the clubhouse and hollered for me to open the window – the clubhouse’s only one. I’d slide it to the side and lower a bucket with a ski rope tied to the handle. By the time I had hoisted it up, the glass of milk would be sitting on the front porch and Mom would be gone unless I invited her up.

And then it was back to my library books.

We lived in corn and bean and tomato country. The fields rotated as the years passed. In our rural neck of the woods there weren’t a lot of places to get your hands on books. There were no bookstores within an hour’s drive, in fact there still isn’t, unless you count Wal-Mart. The drugstore only carried massmarket paperbacks and comic books which explained the V.C. Andrews in our library and my brother’s banker boxes overflowing with Spiderman and Batman.

Without the Union City library, I’m not sure where we would have found books. Even if there would have been a bookstore nearby, our parents couldn’t have afforded to quench our appetite for reading. They owned a small business in which they reinvested most of their earnings. And we read a lot of books, thousands of dollars worth.

It was the books from the library that made me curious about the world and its people. They likely planted the seed for my love of travel and writing. Without them I might not have become a writer. I might not have written Where Am I Wearing?.

It was the books from the library that inspired hours of play in imaginary worlds in which my brother Kyle would often be some sort of alchemist, mixing magic potions and giving them to me to try. The potions were mainly water, but also grass and food coloring and dad’s cologne. Today Kyle has his PhD and experiments on other people.

Without our libraries, what would we be?

This week the Free Libraries of Philadelphia announced they will close after over a century. The library survived world wars and the great depression, but they can’t survive now?!?

As an author, this scares me. Library purchases account for a good portion of first-print runs. (via EditorialAss) Without them it would be tough for publishers to risk publishing first-time authors and those who don’t have big name recognition.

Plus, where is an author supposed to do his research, if not the library? It’s tough enough making a living as an author. If you had to buy every book you used in your research it would be even tougher.

And what would the world be without librarians? I once requested an article by Isaac Asimov that ran in a 1973 Penthouse. A few weeks later I had a copy of the article. (People actually do just read the articles, you know?) If not for the librarian, I would have had to ask your pervy uncle — the one with the penchant for hippie-age hygiene and grooming – to tap into his Penthouse archive. Yuck!

As a reader and thinker and believer that knowledge shouldn’t only be accessible to those who can afford it, a community or city or world without libraries terrifies me.

I was in downtown Muncie, my hometown, a few weeks ago and stumbled into the library. Budget cuts turned it into an archive of Indiana history. A big beautiful archive with a domed ceiling that no one visits and nothing can be checked out. You can walk to the old library; you don’t need a car. There are crosswalks and sidewalks. The same can’t be said for the other city libraries. You have to drive to them or take a bus and then brave streets that aren’t pedestrian friendly. There were five libraries in Muncie, now there are three counting the archive.

The Union City library hasn’t changed much either other than Mrs. Miller, the tiny librarian with the great Story Time voice, has retired. The technology is the same. I recently did a reading there and I had to bring my own projector to show my presentation. The pull down screen that hangs over the door wouldn’t stay down and we had to attach it to a chair with a plastic coat hanger. It came undone and flew up and crashed with bang. It was funny and the audience laughed (see the video below). But you know, it was really sad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I know that times are tough for all levels of government, but cutting funds to the libraries are the last thing we should do. Roads full of potholes don’t make us dumber; they don’t jeopardize the future of our children, our cities, our country.

Give me potholes! Give me libraries! (Unfortunately in Muncie, we have a growing number of the former and decreasing number of the latter.)

Raise our taxes, fine! Give me libraries!

Cancel the city fireworks! Give me libraries!

Keep your deputy assistant junior mayor in training! Give me librarians!

Give me libraries or give me dearth!

Libraries have given me so much over the years. This year alone I’ve probably checked out 60 books and only paid 40-cents when I turned in a book a few days late. Now I plan to give back and I hope that you’ll join me.

Today I’m writing a check to my local library in Muncie for $10.83. The library system expects a budget cut in the near future of $1.3 million. $10.83 represents the amount every resident of Muncie would have to pay to make up the difference. I’ll also include a letter (probably this post) of what libraries mean to me.

I hope that you’ll join me.

When you do, leave a comment in this post and include your library’s address. I’ll send them a note of support and $1.

If we do nothing, “playing library” might be the closest our children ever get to checking out a book. And that would be really uncool.

(Further Reading: New York Times piece on Ray Bradbuy’s fight for his local library. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities,” Bradbury said. “I believe in libraries.”)

Why?

Because it was a rest day from my marathon training (ran 12 miles yesterday) and I’m a total sucker for their “The Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials so I bought a 6 pack.

Have you ever met a traveler that acted and talked as if he or she was the most interesting person in the World?

If you mention kitty litter, they’ve got a tail about their trip in the Ukraine.  Mention a hat and they’ll rundown a list of hats and their cultural significance arranged by country alphabetically.  Don’t even talk about politics!

The thing I really find funny about the Dos Equis ads are that I’ve met people who…

…said they were questioned by the police because they found them interesting.

….feel that their beard has experienced more than a lesser man’s entire body.

…live vicariously through themselves.

…think others hang on their every word..even their prepositions.

…claim that they can speak French in Russian.

I’ve got a lot of travel stories and they tend to pop-up in conversations here and there.  But I’m constantly guarding against The Most Interesting Man in the World Syndrome (MIMIWS).  Heck, I don’t ever think that I’m the most interesting man in the room, but I worry that if Bucharest, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Nepal, and other places work themselves too readily into the conversation, it might look like I’m campaigning for the title.

When I’m in a conversation for very long at some point something will remind me of somewhere I’ve been or I’ll bring up somewhere I’ve been to make a point.  Much of the last eight years of my life have taken place somewhere else.  Even when I wasn’t somewhere else, I was probably writing about somewhere else.

I’ve been a lot of places, but that doesn’t make me any more interesting.  It just means that I’ve been made fun of in more languages than you.

Last week I was having dinner with some folks I just met and they asked me if I had ever been to New York City.  My response was that I had, but I didn’t see much of the city because I was basically held hostage by Tibetan monks I had befriended in Nepal who forced me to watch home videos keeping me from seeing much of the city.

Looking back I should have just lied and said no.

Next, the conversation turned to Dracula, as it tends to do.  I mentioned that I had spent the night alone in Dracula’s Castle in Romania.

While expanding on the Dracula tale I started to feel a twinge of MIMIWS.  After that I decided to withhold other travel stories related to our winding conversation.  When hitchhiking came up, I didn’t mention hitchhiking in Kosovo.  When manners were discussed, I didn’t talk about Bangladesh and the lack of utensils.

I’m a little overly sensitive when it comes to MIMIWS.  I think it’s because I’ve I had hours at a time stolen by people suffering from the disease. After social gatherings I’ll sometimes ask my wife if I sounded like I thought “my blood smells like cologne” or that I could “disarm you with my looks or my hands…either way.”

She’s yet to say that I over did it.  She would, if I did.  Trust me. This is the same woman who recently told me she started dating me because she felt sorry for me.

Perhaps that’s the best cure for MIMIWS: a woman that’ll put you in your place.

A question: Have you suffered MIMIWS or know someone who has?

And one last thing…

Stay thirsty my friends.

(a big thanks to the book club cheerleader for this video’s inspiration)

I almost joined the Navy ROTC in college.  I thought it would be a good way to have some adventures and see the world.  I’m not sure why I didn’t.  I think it had something to do with Jimmy Buffett and this dude that you’ve probably never heard of who had a show on the Travel Channel.

At some point I decided that I could make my own adventures and probably not get shot at.

I graduated in the spring of 2001 and, if I had enlisted in the ROTC, I would have began my two years of mandatory service immediately.  I’ve never been to a desert, but no doubt I would have been shipped to the Mid-East almost immediately.

Instead, on 9/11 I was in Sydney, Australia, driving around in a car I bought and basically lived out of for three months.  I was completely free.  I bummed around the world for another three months and returned home to talks of a military draft.

I come from a long line of draft dodgers.  Maybe “dodgers” isn’t the right word. My dad was right on the edge of being selected during Vietnam.  My grandfather Timmerman was the oldest son in his family so he didn’t go to WWII.  I was told that Grandpa’s brothers always resented him for not going.  He was part of the Greatest Generation, but didn’t participate in the thing that defined the generation the most.

My generation is the first in awhile not to experience the draft. I wonder how that has shaped us.  For the most part, the draft bisects race, education, and economic status.  Without it, our military’s demographic is less representative of the general population.  My generation doesn’t have the shared common experience of basic training or of being shipped off to a foreign land.

This has been on my mind the last few days as I’ve been listening, reading, watching the Memorial Day features.  This Bob Edwards piece about surgeons in Vietnam, and this feature in the Muncie paper about a local man who drove a tank in Patton’s army, hint at the shared experience and bonds of brotherhood that bound their respective generations.

My great uncle Gene Wilt, who served in Africa during WWII, just passed away.  At his viewing, a long line of VFW members approached his casket and saluted one-by-one.  They know his sacrifice. They know what it means to serve.

I never will.

Gene’s brother, my grandfather Bob Wilt, was in Paris during the war.  He didn’t talk about his experience much and no one is really sure what he did or where he did it.  For the most part all we have is the picture I posted above.  But no doubt, when Grandpa or Gene went to the hardware store or the grocery or the movies and they bumped into men around their own age they shared something.  Maybe it was manifested in a wink or a nod, but it was probably just an unspoken, invisible something that most in my generation will never know.

Allen is suing for $10 million.

American Apparel gave him the “Oh no you didn’t” finger wag and their lawyer Stuart Slotnick (what a great name for a lawyer, if I injured my back or was involved in a motorcycle accident, I’d call him!) countered with document requests and subpoenas digging into Allen’s personal life.

From a story in the Huffington Post:

American Apparel lawyer Stuart Slotnick said the company plans to make Allen’s relationships to actress Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen married, the focus of a trial scheduled to begin in federal court in Manhattan on May 18.

“Woody Allen expects $10 million for use of his image on billboards that were up and down in less than one week,” Slotnick said. “I think Woody Allen overestimates the value of his image.”

He said the company’s belief was that “after the various sex scandals that Woody Allen has been associated with, corporate America’s desire to have Woody Allen endorse their product is not what he may believe it is.”

One billboard featured a frame from “Annie Hall,” a film that won Allen a best-director Oscar. The image showed Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew with a long beard and black hat and Yiddish text. The words “American Apparel” also were on the billboard.

Allen’s lawsuit said the billboard falsely implied he sponsored, endorsed or was associated with American Apparel.

Slotnick said it was not a cheap shot to bring up Allen’s sex life in a lawsuit over the billboard and Internet ads.

“It’s certainly relevant in assessing the value of an endorsement,” he said.

Allen on why he wouldn’t do an add for American Apparel:

“I’ve always been, from the start of my career, a special taste,” he said. “There have always been people that have loved me and there have always been people that didn’t know what I was about and couldn’t see anything in me.”

Allen also said ads shown to him by American apparel, including his rabbi ad, “have a sleazy quality to them” and were “not classy.”

He said if he were to do a commercial, he would have to be paid a lot and “it would have to be a very clever, kind of witty or intellectual-style” commercial. He said being asked to do an American Apparel ad would be like being asked to do a deodorant or cigarette commercial.

This battle is fascinating because you have a guy, Allen, who has been involved in “grossly inappropriate” (a judge’s words not mine) conduct with his step-daughter suing a company headed by a man, Dov Charney, who has a closet full of well-documented sexual indiscretions. And both sides are slinging poo about the other’s image.

But wait, now Charney is praising Allen:

I have deep respect for Mr. Allen who is a source of inspiration to me. The billboards and images from the Annie Hall movie were intended to be a parody/social statement and comedic satire to provoke discussion and public discourse about the baseless claims that had been made against American Apparel and myself, society’s reaction to lawsuits that delve into an individual’s private sexual life and the media’s sensationalism of such matters.

American Apparel tends to get great mileage out of their controversial billboards. Someone in their marketing department is probably getting a raise for this one. If their intent was truly to be a social statement to provoke discussion about society’s reaction to lawsuits that delve into an individual’s sex life, mission accomplished!