Monday, March 18, 2024

Making History in Kenya

Annamaria on Monday


 

Ordinarily, when I write about here about the history of Kenya, I am harkening back to the early Twentieth Century, when it was still the Protectorate of British East Africa. Today, I am reporting on very recent history that I have had the enormous privilege to participate in. The picture above documents the moment when a pastoralist man gave a cow to a woman.


What’s the big deal, you might ask.  Well, I’ll tell you.  But the beginning of the story is hard to talk about.  Bear with me.  I promise you it has a very happy ending.

 

In the millennia-old culture of Samburu in Northern Kenya, girls have always been treated as chattel. They belong to their fathers.  Ordinarily, at the age of 9 or so, they are offered as toys to men of the warrior class (males of about 15 till mid-to-late 20s).  This practice is called beading.  Then, once the girls show signs of puberty, they are cut (subjected to FGM), and their fathers sell them into marriage, usually to a man 3, 4, or 5 times their age.  This was the fate of all the local girls until…

 


Enter Sarah Lesiamito, a Samburu girl who—years ago—emerged from that fate.  But then her best friend, a cousin, died in the aftermath of being cut.  Sarah, who was then still a child by current American standards, vowed to herself that she would change that part of her culture.  She grew up to be a teacher and in 2012 began by saving local girls from that awful fate by taking them into her home, keeping them in school, and supporting them through secondary  school and further training.

 

As you can imagine, the fathers of those girls often became enraged, demanded to have their daughters back so that they could “prepare them for marriage” and sell them for cows and goats.  One such father was this man: Lparasan Leparsha

 


His daughter Sonia went to live with Sarah so she could evade a girl’s typical fate.  He went to Sarah to complain about his loss.  Sarah calmly told him, “I am helping you raise your daughter.”  Since the traditional practices are against Kenyan law, he had no way of the seizing “his property.”  He went away mad.

 

But, eventually, just about a year and half ago, Sonia graduated first in her class from secondary school.  Sarah threw a party and feted her protégé.  At which point Lparasan Leparsha went to Sarah and admitted that she had indeed helped him raise his child.

 

In the interim, Sarah and I had met, and I had begun to support her efforts with advice and by raising donations to help her expand.

 

After the party celebartin Sonia,  Leparsha pointed to the dormitory, the small library, the kitchen from which the girls were fed.  “How are you doing all this,” he wanted to know. 

 

“There is this woman in New York,” Sarah said. 

 

“When that woman comes to Samburu,” Leparsha said  “I am going to give her a cow.”

 

And so we made history this past February 17th!  Lparasan Leparsha, Sarah Lesiamito, Michael Lenaimado (Sarah’s gold-star supportive husband), and I.  For the first time ever, a pastoralist man gave a cow to a woman.

 


Leparsha opened his mind and heart and saw the achievements of his brilliant young daughter as the greater good.  Remarkable!

 

The Sidai Resource Centre is now home to forty-eight girls who are safe from harm.  One of Sarah’s early recues, a girl name Shaa, has already come back to her community as registered nurse.  Sonia is in college and studying community medicine.

 


My cow is just a heifer at this point, but she is nearby to the Centre and will be bred one day soon.  After she gives birth to her calf, she will become a source of milk to nourish the Sidai girls as they pursue their dreams.


www.sidairesourcecentre.org



Saturday, March 16, 2024

Fear and Loathing in the Cath Lab

 


Saturday Guest–Jonathan Siger

 

For those of you who may have wondered why I’ve seemed so mysteriously pre-occupied over the past ten days or so, here’s a post put up by my Hunter S. Thompson admiring son, Rabbi Jonathan Siger, to set the record straight. 

 

–Jeff

 


For many people, the sounds of modern country music in the background as a team of physicians wind a tiny wire through your cardiovascular system into the middle of your aorta might be disconcerting.  This, however, is Houston— and what’s more, it’s Houston during rodeo season. So, the sense of ‘everything is normal’ that the soundtrack provided was welcome, and most certainly a better choice than say, Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, or probably anything my 14-year-old daughter would pick. “Let’s get the surgical team pumped up with some driving beats mixed with heavily distorted guitar and incoherent screaming.” No, in my experience, that is the kind of music you use for root canals, not heart catheterization.  

 


In any case, regardless of genre or mood, any musical choice would be preferable to the words I overheard a little over a week ago as I lay on a table under a collection of sensors and imaging technology, with aforementioned tiny wire snooping around the depths of my heart.  “Uh-Oh.”  

 

The next words I heard were “I want you to consult with a surgeon I trust” and “I am really glad we did this.”

 

The next morning, I sat in one of those towers I have visited often as a rabbi and chaplain in Houston’s venerable and venerated complex of hospitals and medical research facilities.  This time, however, I was a potential triple-bypass patient.  Despite the constant and consistent reassurance from all my doctors that this wasn’t an emergency, merely just really, really urgent, it all felt very much like an emergency to me.

 

And it was shocking even if it wasn’t a surprise.  I’d had no symptoms I’d recognize, only some general fatigue.  My desire to get checked out was brought on by a few instances of a rapid heartbeat that were easily explained by too much coffee, too much social media, and not enough sleep. Still, I have a very strong family history of heart problems that show up around my age, and so off we went for some testing. 

 


All my tests and blood work came back normal.  Except for one my cardiologist had strongly suggested that’s known as a “Calcium Score.”  It wasn’t covered by insurance, but he felt it was valuable because it can indicate problems that might escape the view of traditional tests.  That test probably saved my life.  A score of 400 indicates a high risk of adverse cardiovascular incident.  I scored 2800.  If you are reading this, consider having one done.  If it weren’t for that test, I would not have known the danger I was in.  God bless my cardiologist for pushing me to have that test.  

 

One of the advantages of family history is that it sometimes involves family friends or physicians.  In this case one and the same.   Thirty years ago, my father, the author of the internationally recognized, best-selling “Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis” series with #13, AT ANY COST, now available everywhere fine mysteries are found, was one of the clinical trial patients treated by NYC-based Dr. Jeffrey W. Moses. Dr. Moses has continued to work at the forefront of this kind of treatment using stents to clear life-threatening blockages where in the past (and even today!) many would use bypass.  And so, in keeping with the theme of “if it isn’t an emergency why is everyone working so fast?” I was on the next flight to NYC, where, one week on from the first catheterization, a team that specializes in high-risk stent procedures did their thing. 

 


It was a remarkable thing to experience these highly skilled professionals at the cutting edge of their field work together.  I did notice there was no music playing, and while I missed the “country top 40” in the background, I figured if a guy named Moses is operating on a rabbi, I could safely relax without it.  

 

It used to be I would come visit my father and he would make me stack firewood or carry bags of cement mix down to the basement of the farm.  Since I’m older now than he was back in those days, and I’m on light-duty for the next week, I figured the least I can do to help the not-so-old man out is write a blog post.

 


Jonathan–for Dad

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Visitor

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

When I'm at Olifants River Game Reserve, I feel I'm at a place where I'm at home. That isn't really true, because I am, and always will be, a visitor. I've written about this before, but somehow the idea keeps coming back to me when I'm here.

A view of the bungalow I share with two partners overlooking the Olifants River

Olifants River Game Reserve is part of a group of game reserves open to the Kruger National Park. Its huge attraction is that the Olifants River, one of the few true perennial rivers of southern Africa, flows through it. The river is the center of life in the game reserve, because water is always the center of life.

There are always new things to see. They may be small things like fruit moths flocking to the dinner table to share the red wine or large things like elephants enjoying the river. This week the river in front of the bungalow is home to a mother hippo with the smallest baby I've ever seen. It was too far away for a picture but wonderful to see the near new-born trying to scramble onto its mothers head in the water. Her head was easily big enough! A hippo is born under water, tossed up to the air for its first breath by the mother, and thereafter its eyes and nose covers immediately close so that it can submerge again and suckle.

Buffalo coming to drink across the river from the bungalow

But this piece isn’t about seeing wonderful things in the African bushveld.  It’s more about how I feel in this natural area and about what these sorts of places mean to me. I’m not talking about conservation imperatives to which we all subscribe – preserving nature for diversity and future generations and so on.  I’m talking about what it means to me personally to experience this environment and to be part of it.

Of course, we are all visitors.  No matter if we come once for a couple of weeks or if we’re here for months every year.  We have other priorities.  Families, friends, jobs.  These things – for most of us – are concentrated in large towns or cities, so that is where we need to spend most of our time.  In the bush we now live with electricity, vehicles, appliances, cell phones, the internet.  This is hardly raw nature.

The elephants turn

So what draws me back here?  Of course, it includes the wonderful animal and bird life, but the complex interconnections of the systems are endlessly fascinating.  Huge blobs of elephant dung at dawn are sifted pancakes by dusk as dung beetles convert it to an incubator for their eggs and a nursery for their grubs.  (Watch for them rolling balls to a suitable burial place as you drive; a neighboring reserve has a welcome sign reading “Dung Beetles have Right of Way.”)  Caterpillars are hosted and fed by ants for the sweet juices they exude.  In the soft sand below our deck is a minefield of conical antlion holes waiting for unwary ants.  It’s not all feel good.  A baby impala is wonderfully cute but at the bottom of the fauna food chain.  Then, there is a low chance of catching malaria.  Bad luck, bad timing.  Pretty much how you get injured in a car accident in a city.  (There aren’t too many of those here.)

I suppose most people’s personal feel for history is related to their parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on.  For me, to be in a place like this is to experience the Africa of the past.  It makes these things meaningful to me in a way that no historical description can.  The African bush speaks to me about my mother’s grandfather who was a missionary from Belgium to what was then the rural Transvaal, and of my father’s great grandparents who took part in the Great Trek in ox wagons to the north of the country.  And it reminds me always of my mother who spent the happiest times of her life in wild Africa.

A relaxed leopard

I assume that most people feel this sort of connection with their physical, historical, and natural environment.  I can’t imagine that it matters if it’s the African bush, a forested lake in the backwoods of Minnesota, the Australian outback, or (insert your favorite natural place).  I think these areas hold us and remind us where we came from.  I never want to lose this link to what southern Africa was and still is.  Even though I remain a visitor.



Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Superbowl of Books

 Sujata Massey



I write this during my last few hours in the March sunshine of Arizona. How lucky I feel to have had a mystery gathering again during a very drab time of the year in Baltimore. I arrived on March 8 as a guest at the Tucson Festival of Books. This nonprofit event, run by 2000 volunteers, is said to draw 175,000 annually, making it one of largest free public book festival in the country. Yet the vast space of the University of Arizona campus kept it from feeling crowded. 






 

The festival is operated by a private foundation (including many University of Arizona graduates) and is aided by the University, the Arizona Daily Star newspaper,  Tucson Medical Center, other donors and Friends of the Festival. 

 

Tucson’s huge success at making books into a kind of state fair on academic grounds amazes a book festival veteran who is used to much smaller venues. How exactly do these organizers gather up six National Book Award winners, the sweetly hilarious comedian Sarah Cooper, and the outstanding mystery novelist T. Jefferson Parker, Lisa See, Abraham Verghese, pictured below, and 300-plus writers of varying levels of fame? How do they inspire so many Arizonans, whether year-round or snow-birding, to sign up for tickets ahead of time, show up early to wait in long lines, and splurge on the writers with kind words and book purchases? 





 

My guess is this 16-year-old festival has built and built word of mouth recommendations until people can't imagine not going. For Tucson, it's almost like having your own Superbowl--although the tickets are free. But I suppose this analogy may work more for people who are book nuts rather than sports fans.


I came in knowing that I would have the chance to participate on three panels. A bit of work, but it felt like play. Every one of my three panel events, the moderators were well prepared and the conversation between participating authors was thoughtful, with usually a humorous person in the middle of it (thank you, Lev AC Rosen, and Catriona MacPherson). Audience members seemed an even mix of established fans and curious newcomers. An authors’ lounge and a happy hour at an off-campus bar let the writers cut loose with nerdy craft conversations around questions like “Should I be writing  in close third-person?” and “how much time do you really spend writing and rewriting one book?” 







 

Hotels throughout Tucson provided rooms for visiting authors. I was booked in at an Aloft Hotel on a busy road called Speedway. The best thing about was that it was that just by ducking behind the hotel, I had a pretty and quiet fifteen-minute stroll to the heart of the festival’s buildings on the University of Arizona’s vast campus. One day I made three round trips and was thrilled when my phone app told me I'd clocked 14,000 steps.


On the way there I goggled at the interesting fraternity and sorority buildings that were so different from those I’ve seen at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. These were all single story and fitted smoothly with the Western vernacular architecture featured throughout Tucson. I noticed fake grass installed in front of many of the Greek buildings. This made sense because of the desert environment, although the gardening fairy who lives in my brain was whispering “try native plants, please!” Most of the official University buildings had moved into this direction of minimalist native plantings. One thing I loved about the setting was a sense that the state's premier university belonged to everyone, whether or not they were or students.

 















The campus itself had a mix of grand turn of the century brick buildings, brutalist mid-century shapes, and newer ecologically smart constructions. I had fun roaming the vast bookstore and then going around the campus looking for turtles in the pond. It's great that a free streetcar system runs along the campus and into the city.


And how was the intellectual component, you ask? The panels were excellent. Everyone I spoke to, who'd been a participant, felt positive about it. My panel topics were The Wide, Wide World of Mysteries, Searching for Social Justice, and Mid-Century Murders. After we spoke, I met new readers and people who were in Arizona for a break, including my mom's friend, Betsy, who was visiting from Minnesota. One thing I loved about the setting was a sense that the state's premier university belonged to everyone, whether or not they were or students. This could be a positive action for other colleges and universities to try.




















 

On Sunday morning, I got my Arizona native plant fix in Oro Valley. I met my friend Patti, a librarian in the Pima County system, at a restaurant set within Tohono Chul park, a 49-acre botanical learning center and park. Thong Chul exists because of the generosity and foresight of Richard and Jean Wilson, a couple who began purchasing small patches of desert in the Oro Valley, refusing many times to sell to developers. When the city condemned an area nearby to allow for widening a road, the Wilsons insisted that the very old and tall saguaro cacti that had grown tall over hundreds of years be carefully removed and planted at Tohono Chul. The Wilsons’ private property developed into a private park in the late 70s and was formally dedicated in 1985.







I enjoyed my delicious egg breakfast combining Mexican and Native American foods in an original hacienda house on the property, now a restaurant called the Garden Bistro. Then it was time to lather on more sunscreen and wander amidst the spectacular, healthy cacti and other desert plants. The desert landscape feels surreal for me, even though I’ve now been to Arizona two years in a row. I admire how these plants store water and nutrients and endure without trouble the blistering conditions that will arrive in a few months.







 

At Poisoned Pen Bookshop, two hours away in Scottsdale, a refrigerator selling COLD DRINKS stands among the bookshelves. I got water there and so much more when I visited on Monday for an event with one of my fellow Soho Press authors, Stephen Mack Jones. Stephen and I chatted about our recent books and writing mystery series in general. We were happy to meet the bookstores’ regulars: not only Arizonans, but a warm couple from Detroit, where Stephen’s books are set, and friends from Kansas City, who had also attended the Tucson Book Festival and driven out to listen and chat some more.






 

Maybe the wide desert spaces, towering mountains and endless blue sky bring more than visual serenity to people living here. It could be that they open space for introspection and reading.  I was grateful to be in Arizona, and hope to return. 






Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Cover Ups & Breakthroughs--

 Ovidia--every other Tuesday

Breakthroughs of the brick and mortar sort, I mean--it's renovation time here!

Sorry in advance, but this is going to be a dusty, grimy, messy and unfinished post. I'm afraid I'm not up to writing anything more 'finished' this week.

Even though we thought we got most of our things covered up--

and especially the bedding and stuff--

and even though all the windows are open and the air filters are running, it's still really dusty. Which translates into a sneezy, sniffy, drippy and headachey me, alas.

But it's going to be worthwhile when it's finished (much the same thing I tell myself when trying to finish a book!) 

Because we've finally decided--after living in our apartment for eleven years--that we can do without the huge bathtub and 'rainfall shower' it came with! 

('Rainfall shower' sounds good, but it means that if you accidentally tweak the wrong lever everything, including your fluffy towels and Kindle device get soaked).

So we decided to go for it...



Here's the former bathtub/ rainfall shower area. I know it doesn't look like much right now, pretty much like my current WIP... 



(these are today's notes waiting to be typed into the computer)

Which isn't as easy as it sounds, given most of the stuff from the corridors etc have ended up in my office!


 But I believe it's all going to turn out well. 

I have to believe it--that's how we all finish all our books, isn't it? No matter how hopeless things look, how chaotic the rubble we have to push through and how uncooperative the material appears we sketch out an idea of what we're dreaming of and set our protagonists / contractor, architect & workmen on the job. 

Then we just keep coaxing them along day by day, throwing words (or alternatively tea and biscuits) at them and trying to keep the rest of our lives going.

The new bathroom should be done in ten days. The new book--hopefully--will be ready to go to my agent by the end of the month.

Please wish me luck on surviving this!




Monday, March 11, 2024

Melancholy: Hints From History on How to Combat It.

 Annamaria on Monday


How many times lately have you heard a warning that the news report you about to see or hear contains words or images that may be upsetting?  Those admonitions are meant to avoid intensifying a pandemic of depression.  The World Health Organization data shows that melancholia is the world's fifth leading cause of death and disability.  We might be tempted to think that, in the wake of Covid, this is happening for the first time.  But that is not true.  Today, I offer some historical facts about depression, and I hope my conclusions will shine some light on this particular gloom.  Here below a quick summary of what many experts say about this subject.  Caveat: A lot of what I have to say amounts to gross generalizations.  I do hope, though, to provide some insights. Or at the very least, food for thought

The first epidemic of melancholy was detected at some point in the late 16th, early 17th centuries.  It was during that period that the human race went through the beginnings of "modernization."  Until that time, at least in European cultures, societies were stratified into workers, land owners, and the ruling class.  People knew where they belonged and thought of themselves as a permanent part of a group; religion reinforced the pecking order, and cultures also provided release with rituals and festivities.  Many of the latter were carnivals - frequent, if brief raucous periods  of "anything goes."


But then, with the development of industrialization and widespread education, suddenly social climbing became a real possibility.   People, men mostly, began to see themselves as individuals with a chance at social mobility.  Consequently, people began to measure themselves against others and against the criteria for positions they hoped to achieve.  By the 1600s, in England, one could buy self-help books instructing the would-be gentlemen on how to dress and comport themselves.  This new kind of thinking can be seen culture of the time.  Shakespeare's plays for instance are replete with characters who - within the story - are pretending to be something other than who they were born to be.  Portia in Merchant of Venice, for instance, passing herself off as a judge.


During this period, festivals that allowed people to blow off steam began to disappear.  Perhaps this happened because social climbing meant one had to stay constantly aware of the "was and was not done."  Ambitious began to suffer from stress about their chances of success.  And while anxiety was increasing, people had fewer and fewer opportunities to let go and release the pressure. Even dancing became a controlled activity.  Ecstasy was out of the question.   

Living spaces became organized into public rooms (drawing and dining rooms) and private rooms (studies and bedrooms), where one could stop being constantly on guard against committing a faux pas. This gave at least a modicum of relief, but still all that introspection lead many to feel completely isolated. Protestant sects played into the trend with tenets describing a judgmental, rather than a merciful God.

From the get go of these trends, people complained about melancholia, and attention was paid because concerned observers saw that depression was dangerous to the sufferer's wellbeing, even threatened lives.


Nowadays, in the aftermath of a pandemic that called for social isolation, depression and disconnection seem to be everywhere.  Add to that technology that allows (even tempts us) to look at screens instead of each other.  And keeps children indoor playing on computers instead of running around outside and making up games with other children!


The antidote?  Easy to say.  Perhaps difficult to achieve.  The answer is open, relaxed contact with other people.  Dancing with them.  Cooking with them.  Working with them to reduce suffering in the world.  Trying with all our might not to take ourselves so seriously.

Most important of all is to be aware of the dangers to ourselves and those around us.  And to seek help.    

  

Sunday, March 10, 2024

The Hungry Ghosts

Sara E. Johnson -- special guest

We are excited to welcome Sara E. Johnson back to the blog. Her Alexa Glock series, set in New Zealand, is a Murder is Everywhere favorite and she has new secrets to share from her upcoming release, The Hungry Bones. Welcome Sara!

I am happy to be back with Murder is Everywhere. Thanks, Wendall, for asking me to visit. My fifth Alexa Glock forensic mystery, The Hungry Bones, comes out in June.

 

Coming June 11.
 

The setting is a charming former gold-mining town on the South Island of New Zealand.  

 

Arrowtown, New Zealand
 

Alexa, a traveling forensic investigator (most towns in New Zealand are too small to have any CSI), is called in when a skeleton is discovered in an unmarked grave. Alexa's specialty is teeth.

 

She'll analyze the strontium isotopes in the enamel of the skeleton's molar to determine where he spent his formative years, but that's another very cool story. This story is about gold and ghosts.
 
The Arrowtown area gold rush began in the 1860s. Most of the miners were English, Irish, and Scottish. By 1862, fifteen hundred miners camped beside the Arrow River. 

 

 

As soon as the river and surrounding area was deemed barren, the European miners rushed off to other goldfields. Chinese miners were recruited to keep the economy going. By the 1880s, there were five thousand Chinese in the Otago region, almost all men. 

 

Chinese gold-miners in New Zealand
 

The Europeans miners mostly stayed in New Zealand. (Gosh – they had come all that way!) The Chinese considered themselves visitors. Their goal was to make money and return home. They did this in one of two ways: Strike it rich, buy a bowler hat, and sail to Hong Kong on a steamer ship. The second ticket home was to sail on a corpse ship.

You heard right.

There's a Chinese proverb: Falling leaves return to their roots. The Chinese believed that after death, the soul hovers over the grave until he is home. Many of the miners, of course, never struck it rich or made it home.

 

 


Hence – the corpse ships. Chinese benevolent societies arranged the ships. If you paid in advance – most miners or their families did to avoid the calamity of being abandoned – you were guaranteed a trip home if you died. The first corpse ship, Hoihow, set sail in 1883 with the remains of 286 miners. Members of the Cheong Sing Tong society had painstakingly exhumed them from graveyards all over Otago, including Arrowtown. They defleshed (if necessary) and cleaned every bone and bagged them together in calico bags. Then they enclosed the bags in zinc boxes covered with wood. Tiny coffins. 

 

 

The S.S. Ventnor
 

The next tomb ship was nineteen years later. The S.S. Ventnor sailed from Wellington on October 26, 1902, with 499 skeletons aboard. Seven elderly Chinese men were given free passage home in exchange for attending to the coffins. Somewhere off Hokianga – the far north of the North Island – the Ventnor went down, taking all those hungry ghosts to the bottom of the sea.

 

The Chinese gold miners died twice.

 

Over the next few months bones and tiny coffins washed ashore. Māori members of Te Roroa and Te Rarawa iwi (tribes), who were mystified at the time, respectfully interred them in their urupā (burial grounds).

 

The wreck of the Ventnor was discovered in 2012 and later designated as an archaeological site.

 

Do you have strong feelings about where you want to be buried or have your ashes spread? 

 

 

When I was in New Zealand last year, I visited Opononi, a beach community where a memorial was built, to pay my respects. The names of all 499 miners are listed on plaques. It is a beautiful and haunting memorial. Check out The Hungry Bones, this June, to learn more about the New Zealand gold rush and why one miner did not want to return to his roots. The book is dedicated in memory of the Chinese miners. 

 

---Sara

 

You can find Sara at https://www.sarajohnsonauthor.com

On Twitter/X at @sarajhn