Reflections Scribbled at Dusk on a Bus Ride into Ethiopia

Homelessness: that strange ache of nostalgia and déjà vu that you feel when entering a foreign land.

One that is not yours, nor has ever been yours, yet somehow, gazing out on its gently folded landscape, you feel a calling as if from the house of childhood years, and the man you might have become.

If only you could remove yourself from the current, descend from the ton of metal and plastic and engine fuel, have these evaporate around you until even the roar of motors and the squeal of brakes are no more than a dissipated echo, a mirage gently sinking into the moist earth below.

If you could walk barefoot through this earth and feel the pulse of its ancient rhythm, as soft and malleable as silt curled beneath your toes, then you would have found an origin, a starting point at least, a tap from which the soul trickles, spreading far, but always with the taste of this spring on its ephemeral lips.

Through the kind bushes and sunken ravines you would walk, over the mounds of soil and craggy rocks alike, until you would come out onto a surface, more alien than the stars above (your roof), more unnatural than the cathedrals built by insects (your neighbors), sliced across the horizon as if to subdue it, pulling the soul’s trickle faster, tugging it toward a mythological infinity that whispers, always barely audible, yet piercing through the low rumble of the earth, implanting a desire that cannot be fulfilled, yet begs satisfaction,

until the metal and the plastic, the rubber and the fuel with a destination to achieve, re-condense around you, forming smudged panes through which the eye hungrily digs, and in the belly, or behind it, barely audible over the motor’s hum, whispers an ache.

Ethiopian countryside outside the walls of the ancient city of Harar

Where the Streets Have No Name

Our Welcoming Entrance - Vestibule

Perched on a large rock near the entrance to a construction site, illuminated only by the small flashlight in my hand, I listened to the voices pass by in the dark as people went on about their evening business.

As unlikely as it may seem, I was in the process of administering a University Entrance Exam, albeit, what was rapidly turning into the most ghetto attempt at professionalism ever conceived. Zooming out for some context on my nighttime perch brings into view the large building behind me, well on its way to becoming one of the nicer buildings along one of the more central and developed streets of Hargeisa, but currently in a state of sorrow half-completion. A windowless concrete hulk, the bare walls, staircases submerged in cement dust, and piles of rubble surrounding the entrance bespoke a construction project that, like much else in Somaliland, was running significantly behind schedule.

All this was fine and good, save the minor detail that Ilya, our Comrade-cum-University Administrator in Chief, had scheduled the Entrance Examination for our Adult English Program to be THAT night, at THAT exact location. It was to be given to prospective students who, having braved the unexpected turn-off down a dirt road and entered the grounds of the eerie construction site, would make their way up the debris strewn stairwell to a classroom on the second floor, distinguished primarily by the fact that some tiles had been put in across the floor, which had also been apologetically swept. It speaks volumes about the adaptability and general tolerance for ineptness that we expected students to navigate this obstacle course just to sit for our exam, and it might have gone off without a hitch, if it weren’t for one minor construction detail that absolutely HAD to have been completed by this point in time… Indeed, prospective students could locate the towering building shell, step through the rusty wire and bent nails on the stairway, and find the one classroom with the swept floor and the desks we had trucked from our secondary school, EXCEPT for the minor detail that the exam was slated to begin after dark, and we had no lights.

“The wiring was supposed to be completed last week!”, “This is such a poor reflection of our program, we should postpone the exam!” were Ilya’s initial pronouncements. With no lights to illuminate even the bare floor or rubble filled stairs of our semi-completed locale, cancelling the exam, changing its location, or just giving the whole enterprise up would have been logical actions. Did we do any of these things? Of course not, otherwise how would I have ended up sitting on a large rock at the construction site entrance, ushering shadowy figures across the road to come forward, “weren’t they here for the Adult English Exam?”

Our “solution” was to leave Abaarso for the exam 30 minutes early, stop by the only electronics shop in the market minutes before it closed, and negotiate for four electric lanterns, which we would use to provide safety, reassurance, adequate testing conditions, and all the comforts of home for the intrepid test takers who would see our lantern, shining in the empty rectangle where a window would eventually be, as a beacon to everything that our program stood for: Preparedness, Professionalism, … Enlightenment?

My job was first to strategically establish key areas of illumination so as to minimize our casualty toll, placing one lantern in the hallway, one at the turn in the stairwell, and two in the classroom where the students would pleasantly work their way through their test papers, enjoying the cool breeze through the window frame and the soft blare of the two adjacent mosques calling out their evening time prayers. Secondly, I would establish myself as the docent to this ghoulish edifice of education and wait patiently on the large rock outside the entrance for any souls brave enough to wander near, ready to guide them with my single beam through the horror movie set that would be their testing locale.

As I waited there patiently and listened to the voices float by in the deep evening gloom, I was reminded of another uneven dirt road, the one that ran, or often flowed, past our house in Buea, Cameroon. There, as well as here, strangers passed in a seemingly endless procession, heading who knows where but always willing to offer a word of greeting, or nod hello to the strange white figure seated, staring out at them. Though these two dirt roads existed in manifestly different contexts, one ambling off into the jungle under sagging power lines and constantly pawed by chickens, the other mere blocks from the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, Livestock and Somaliland’s Parliament, they held for me a comforting similarity. Both were immune to the hustle and bustle that might be expected to comprise a country’s fourth largest city, or a semi-country’s capital. Both were of soil, uneven, reshaped by the rains and immodestly slippery when wet, the kind of roads that seemed more at home in a quiet countryside. But for the many feet that morning and evening molded them into something new. But for the cars, carts, and trucks that tried to put them straight and only ended up mired in their muddy grip. These were not roads that resisted change, no, they merely bent and sunk, tilted and turned to each new force that rode them. These roads were indifferent to whether the woman whose car got stuck every time it drizzled and repaid our assistance with fresh pineapples left on the front porch needed to be somewhere, or would rather have kept her pineapples. And they were indifferent to our English exam, advertised by a pale figure, perched atop a large rock, outside a creepy construction site.

Eventually several examinees arrived, were ushered to a chorus of excuses and apologies up the debris strewn staircases, and successfully sat for the exam. One young lady even had two of her friends accompany her as far as the exam room door before explaining that they had only come to reassure her and would wait outside. It would be hard to say I blame her; chances are I wouldn’t have set foot in a strange building that matched ours’ description if I had the 101^st Airborne Division following behind me. But TIA (This Is Africa), and the students who came were determined to enroll in our course, to better their English, to fulfill all the promises that such a language offered. But as the tiny lanterns illuminated the test takers, struggling through the grammar exercises before them, I felt that they shouldn’t be judged by this building, by this situation, by the half-finished wreck around them or the desire to speak a language not their own that drove them to such a place. Rather, I’d like to think of the voices outside, the silhouettes moving in the darkness, and the road they traveled on.  

Our "Ambiently" Lit Exam Room

The View Out On Downtown Hargeisa from the Unfinished Roof

A Courtside Lesson in Somali History

Yesterday, while resting after completing my daily ritual of shooting a basketball at the rickety hoops Suzanne and I assembled, sans wrenches, last week for the new girls’ basketball court, one of the 10^th grade students visiting for the day decided to give Jake, John and I a lesson in recent Somali history.

Coming to this country several weeks ago, I realized I knew practically nothing about the history of the region, be it the tumultuous events of the past few years, or the earlier story of a place that went from being one of Africa’s most promising countries, to the world’s most famous failed state.  Seeking to remedy my surprising ignorance, I procured a copy of I.M. Lewis’s A Modern History of the Somali, one of the few comprehensive texts on the Somali people, thankfully on hand in the school’s library for Stephanie to use in her African history course. Lewis, a social anthropologist by discipline, is probably the leading scholar on the Somali people, a nation unfortunately split between five “states”, from Northern Kenya, the Ogaden desert of Ethiopia, and Southern Somalia, to Somaliland and Djibouti in the north.

As any scholar of history, ethnicity, and nationalism will tell you, the misalignment of nations and the modern boundaries of states, often as a consequence of ignorant, malicious, or simply uncaring Western colonial decisions, is one of the chief drivers of conflict in today’s world and often a recipe for recurring disaster. The Somali nation, a uniquely dismembered people in terms of the state boundaries imposed upon them, suffer the further complications of their unique position at the intersection of Africa and the Middle East; a crossroads of religion and commerce notable equally for the value of the bountiful goods that pass by its shores as for the starkness and unforgiving caprice of its desert environment.

Jumping into Lewis’s work toward the end at the chapter titled “Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Revolution in the Horn of Africa”, and reading on to “Chaos, International Intervention, and the North”, I came to respect the incredible complexity that modern Somali history has contained, playing host to foreign influences from near and far, while struggling with its own many identity crises between the traditional clan structure and radical new forms of government under Military Dictator General Siyad Barre’s promotion of Scientific Socialism. Making my way through a fairly dense text that at times seemed to gloss over major events like the beginning of the Somali Civil war and the flight of General Barre, while explicating in detail the Machiavellian maneuvers of Barre’s inter-clan positioning and foreign policy dilemmas, I arrived at a better understanding of the diverse obstacles that have been thrown in the way of Somalia’s development as a modern nation. The complex milieu of sub-clans, political leaders, warlords, militant movements and shifting alliances is difficult to reconcile into one cohesive narrative, so I won’t attempt it. 

However, the 10^th grade student, Abdurrahman, managed quite well in his own limited vocabulary to explain to us on the basketball court what this conflict has meant to him in his short 15 years.

Growing up in Somaliland, stable since its self-declared independence in 1991, Abdurrahman has watched the southern part of his country fall apart in stops and starts. Relating the perspective of a friend who lives in Mogadishu, where not a night passes that does not involve gunfire and the blasts of munitions, he tells how his friend’s visit to Hargeisa was met with astonishment at the peace and quiet that allowed him to sleep through the night undisturbed. According to him a similar peace was achieved for a brief 6 months  in the south in 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union succeeded in expelling the violent warlords from Mogadishu and achieving some measure of stability for the beleaguered capital. This peace was shattered by the US-backed Ethiopian invasion that reignited the conflict and re-opened the door to the warlords and to Al-Qaeda, ushering in the past 4 years of near constant violence in the ravaged city that was once the jewel of Africa.

Supplementing this 15 year olds views was an article from the Nation shared with me by a friend from home, detailing the extensive support the US has given the capricious and self-concerned warlords that have battled each other for their control of the area, leading to the rise of Al-Shabab and its tactics of terror. This article is eye-opening, not only for the mercurial nature of the alliances and loyalties of many key figures in the conflict, but for the level of foreign, in particular US, involvement in the region, exemplifying a policy of intervention and secret dealings that has had much the opposite effects to those intended by US strategic aims. It’s hard to see much distinction between the uninformed backing of factional leaders today that accentuate divisions between clans and militarize their differences, and the partition of the Somali people between 5 states by the colonial powers many years before, leading to the conclusion that Western policy in the Horn of Africa remains essentially misguided, and unchanged.

Cause for much more hope, and debate, is Abdurrahman’s pronouncement that he longs for the day of a unified Somalia, an unusual viewpoint seldom heard in Somaliland which is fiercely protective of its tenuous sovereignty and marked separation from the chaos to its south. Whether it reflects the hopeful naiveté of a 15 year old unmarked by the brutal cleavages that have arisen between so many, or a powerful sentiment for reconciliation in the face of so much division, Abdurrahman’s dream is invaluable, for it represents a generation on the rise, and one, as far as he is concerned, determined to seek his education abroad, but then return to his country, for his cause is with his people.

A Coat of Many Colors, a Field of Many Dreams

Several days into my first week here at Abaarso Tech, and I am paralyzed.

Paralyzed, not by lack of possibility or motivation, but quite the opposite; there is just so much to be done here, so much that I can take part in, contribute to, create, that I am paralyzed by the possibilities, and the creeping knowledge that I will not have enough time to accomplish all that I want here in this windy oasis of learning.

First and foremost, I want to teach. As someone who has spent uncountable hours pushing and struggling to make students care about learning in the desperately underperforming yet even more desperately under-motivated Philadelphia school system, the chance to lead a classroom of students, many coming from some of the least privileged households in the world, yet thirsty for knowledge and advancement, is a ship finally come to shore.

To plunge fresh minds into the river of knowledge and immerse them completely, to start fires in the forest of curiosity, to squeeze the milk of reason and the syrup of intellectual stimulation from the craggy rocks and stunted trees of this desert landscape, this may seem slightly overwrought, but often these delusions of grandiosity are the greatest motivation to push onwards towards the mirage, against the insidious sands of ignorance, the unbearable heat of complacence, and through the stark desert landscape of a closed off mind.

A true love of learning is not such a dry and brittle tender that it is easily ignited, but with the effort to get it alight comes the knowledge that it will continue to burn with a smoldering alacrity long into the darkest night, serving as a beacon to others and lighting a path forward through the unknown. As the proud defender of one of the world’s last remaining libraries in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 declared as she went up in flames along with her treasured stacks of books:

"Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England Somaliland, as I trust shall never be put out."

(Originally a quotation from heretics burned at the stake during the Reign of Bloody Mary)

Not that the state of the world is quite to the point of Bradbury’s dark vision yet, but a mounting number of books and documentaries have come to decry the state of education, at least in America, lamenting its long decline and calling to arms any and all who would strive to save this vaunted institution. While America’s primary and secondary schools fall further behind, our Universities remain a bastion of excellence, holding the majority of the top rankings throughout the world and attracting talent from every corner of the globe. Perhaps this merely represents a shift in our comparative advantage, just as the manufacturing industry has all but disappeared from our shores, so the “factories” of basic education are finding the competitive environment unencouraging, while high tech and higher education flourish. In any case, though I will attempt to comment on the macro trends of global education at a later date, let me return to the (plethora of) tasks at hand.

Yes, I want to teach, to instill a love of learning in my students, and to introduce and encourage them along a journey that includes a profound appreciation of the classics, knowledge of contemporary writers, and the empowerment to dive into any work of literature and find meaning. As I am teaching writing, I want my students not only to be great connoisseurs of the best writing available, but to become accomplished practitioners, eager and willing to make their own mark on the word wielding the greatest weapon of all, the pen, err, keyboard.

Beyond my core objective of teaching, my goals run the gamut, from the most mundane to the most complex of endeavors:

I want to improve the landscaping at this school, to align rocks into pathways and sculptures rather than them being a constant hazard underfoot.

I want to change the school’s system of waste management, to limit the burning of unsavory materials that pollutes the air and wastes potential resources, to turn plastic and glass into new things and to develop a sense of responsibility for the environment amongst the staff and students.

I want to raise the school’s image amongst the global conscience, through promotion and engagement of social media, as well as outreach to a greater base of donors and supporters.

I want to be active in the most literal sense, coaching a basketball team, giving tennis lessons, playing football, for the health of my own body as well as the promotion of team skills amongst the students, cohort that they are that must rely on each other to succeed.

I want to prepare the students for applying to college, to help them crack the SAT and TOEFL, to write superior personal essays, to secure feasible financial aid. Partnerships will need to be developed with US universities willing to give them a chance and the students must be ready to survive and compete in a culture very foreign to their own.

I want to introduce a system of peer mediation and conflict resolution amongst the students to further their independence and interdependence when dealing with life’s issues, and I want to enhance their emotional intelligence, teaching them the soft skills of cooperation, communication, trust, responsibility and tolerance.

As for myself, I want to improve my own teaching ability, increase my knowledge of Arabic and Somali, gain knowledge of management and finance from the AT University programs, and make connections within the Somali community for greater cultural understanding as well as future development projects in the region and the greater Middle East.

As of now, these are the tasks before me. Only time will tell whether a year’s time is sufficient, but all I

can do is begin. Each great oration starts with a single word, and even a small wall must begin with a
single stone, so it’s time to shake the paralysis and begin picking them up, one dusty rock after another.

Our current method of waste disposal, 

one of the many tasks to be accomplished.

(Notice the mini-guard in mid-air above the flame ;)

First Impressions: In Pictures

From the Highest Building in the World 

(Burgh Khalifa, Dubai)

                                                         

                                                       To Our Humble Mosque and Laundry Drying Apparatus 

                                        To the Great Plains of Scrubland and Valley's Surrounding Us

                                                     And One of Our Dashing Guards, Ahmed

                                               And the Pleasant Foliage that inhabits this land

                                          And the actually somewhat Pleasant Garden outside my Room

We have Abaarso Tech and its surroundings, a place to spend the next year exploring and enhancing!

Finding the Country that’s not on the Map

“No sir, that is not my passport number”, “No I don’t have any other passports, you must have made some mistake”

These were the first words I had the great fortune to speak to a Somaliland Official, uttered mid-morning at the tiny building that served as Hargeisa’s airport, arrival hall, customs, and immigration. We had done everything right, printed out the letter urging the government to waive the required exchange of our America dollars into the intensely devalued Somaliland currency, bringing with us our ticket stubs and the sheet of paper with all of our names printed on it that served as our official visa to enter the state-that-isn’t-a-state known as Somaliland. Of course doing everything right is no guarantee, and sure enough, my passport number and the one they had printed for me were completely  different, causing me some anxiety that I would be unable to enter the country…at least in any other country this might pose a problem, however, seeing that many other mistakes were present on our visa, not least the misspelling of the word “Republic” in the official title of the “Republic of Somaliland”, I thought I had a pretty good case for letting me in, and by golly, it had been too long of a flight to be turned back now!

My journey to the country that’s not on the map started off with a fairly typical though perhaps inauspicious delayed flight from Raleigh to New York’s JFK. I had planned to spend my 5 hour layover meeting up with my friend Mike Chen and relaxing in the airport, but instead had only time for a quick hello and the receiving of a gift of trail mix before I had to rush into the security line for my next flight to Moscow. Arriving in the gleaming (apparently brand new) Moscow airport, I immediately recognized how clean and soft the floors looked, and in following up on that intuition, lay down for a delightful 7 hour nap. Then it was time for our flight to Dubai, the Vegas of the Middle East, and a fitting juxtaposition to presage our arrival in one of the world’s newest and least developed countries. After checking in to our hotel, which appeared to double as a Chinese, Korean, and Pakistani brothel during the on-season, the other teachers and I had the chance to scout out some delicious Lebanese Shwarma at 3am before the sun rose and the iron curtain of fasting fell across the (outwardly) pious little Emirate. Awaking early, I had the distinct pleasure of taking Dubai’s brand new metro for a ride, an amazing piece of engineering that evoked the futuristic cities of science fiction, by which I was swiftly transported to the Tallest Building in the World, which proved too large to fit in one photograph, and too expensive to enter and rise to the top ($100 for a peek from its view). After a little more mall-centric site seeing, we met up with Kyle and Ayu, two former Abaarso Tech teachers, who for the next several hours fielded a constant barrage of questions from all of us information starved teachers, and valiantly stood their ground against this onslaught of curiosity.  After breaking our fast at a delicious Indian restaurant, we made our way to the airport, where we awaited the final two legs of our quest to enter the un-mapped nation across the sea.

Our Dallo (Djibouti)  Airlines flight, on an aircraft that appeared to be acquired from Spain, and was operated by a crew from Tajikistan, offered a number of peculiarities which bare relating. Among the expected group of Somali passengers, there was a large contingent of what appeared to be Pakistani Sheikhs, robed and bearded, who took every occasion to demonstrate their piety and defy the normal guidelines for airplane travel. As one took the loudspeaker to voice the call to prayer, several holed up in the small bathroom to purify themselves from head to foot, and as we approached an area of turbulence, though the pilot desperately flashed the seatbelt sign, all rose and knelt in the aisle to pray, much to the consternation of our anxious young flight attendant.

Arriving safely in the early morning, the departure/arrival room of the small Djibouti airport was brimming with camouflage, a large contingent of US Navy personnel evidently were making their long awaited escape back home. The look in their eyes said it all; they had no intention of welcoming us to the small, hellishly hot country they had just been toiling in, their focus was purely on McDonald's, Mom, and Apple Pie. Finally we were called out onto the runway and exactly according to our expectations, boarded a propeller place with no AC and seats that flopped around brokenly in the wind. This proved surprisingly comfortable (for me) and the combination of hot air and roaring propellers lulled me into a deep sleep, until 45 minutes later we touched down on the dirt runway of Hargeisa (Int'l) Airport, and experienced fresh breezes sent down from the hills to welcome us to the country beyond the cartographer’s reach.

Now no matter how fresh those breezes were, I was not going to wait around in that airport for the next bunch of frazzled deliveries to push their way into line, so I explained, as best I could, that the visa was “full of mistakes!” I may have said something to the effect of “you even got the name of your bloody country wrong! Of course you made a mistake with my passport number!” In any case I eventually prevailed, and breathing deeply with relief (though somewhat disturbed at the same time by the depth (or lack thereof) of screening), was able to rejoin my compatriots, claim my luggage (they actually checked the tags!) and make my way along the dusty road to where the Abaarso Tech bus awaited us.

Driving through the streets of Hargeisa, I’m not sure what I had expected, but the dissonance that I felt led me to believe that it had been something else. Hargeisa was unlike any other capital city I had ever seen. In many other economically deprived, underdeveloped countries, the rest of the country may suffer, but corrupt dictators pour all the resources at their disposal into making their capital’s appropriate flagships to their pride and arrogance. Here however, nary a building of any size, nor a thoroughfare of any particular pomp or care was to be found. As we passed through the heart of town, and no large stores nor sizable offices appeared, and as we drove by the Presidential Palace, a building that distinguished itself mainly by its large fence and the cleanliness of its walls, it became apparent that either Somaliland distributed its wealth much more evenly… or the country simply had fewer resources than I had imagined. In any case, the capital was soon left behind and as we bounced along the road to Abaarso I was able to appreciate the removed location of the school where I would be living and working. On top of a hill, surrounded by valleys and dessert planes, the school was a bucolic call to action, and I had arrived at last to do my part.

Heeding the Horn's Call

Today is Sunday, and I am at the Illustrious Quail Ridge Books and Music, such a mecca of learning and opportunity to support your local community that I woke up at 530am to get here 3.5 hours before it opened!
(so now that Mom's happy...)

Tomorrow I leave lovely NC for a year to head to the Horn of Africa, where I will be teaching English at a high school called Abaarso Tech in the small independent (though unrecognized) country of Somaliland. 

For those who don't know where it is, don't worry, I didn't either

The first leg of my tarantula-like journey starts tomorrow afternoon, when I fly to JFK. From there I will be taking Aeroflot (is it just me or does that name not inspire soaring birds and flight? especially the "flot" part...) to Moscow, where I will be connecting to a flight to Dubai. Because Abaarso Tech takes the liberty of creatively finding the cheapest possible way to get to Somaliland (hey, I would have done the same), I get to stay in Dubai for a day! Whether this means I will go Skiing, or play Tennis on the highest outdoor court in the world, or take in the view of a series of Islands shaped like a Palm Tree from the Highest Building in the World, I'm not sure, but at least I am excited to be visiting a place that was a large component of my Thesis (see previous post, keyword: notfun) if only for a brief amount of time. I can only imagine that the skyscrapers of Dubai and the lavish celebrations of Ramadan will create a sharpe contraste (why did i just put e's on those wordes?) to Somaliland and the little village outside of Hargeisa where my school is located. However, some people live of juxtaposition (not saying i'm one, not saying i ain't) and at least the comparison should be informative.

The next day, from Dubai  I fly to Djibouti (jokes encouraged) where its just a quite morning hop over to Hargeisa where hopefully somebody will meet me at the airport (please?).

That's all I can really say for now, rest assured, after I rest, I will tell you if this series of puddle jumps went at all according to plan, and will begin blogging (fingers crossed) regularly, about my experience in Somaliland and the hands on work that I will be doing there!

For now, i leave you with this, a Hand (not mine), on Somaliland.

 

Learning and Serving in Egypt and the US

Ok I lied, I am ALMOST going to bring us up to present day in this next post, only because I had the privilege to take part in an incredible program this summer called LearnServe Egypt, which I think deserves a little mention here. ( For more complete coverage and perspectives, visit www.ifeegypt.org )

LearnServe Egypt was a six week program created by the Institute for Education in partnership with Mercator XXI LLC, and the AUC School of Business, where 6 Americans and 6 Egyptians were united to form lasting bonds of friendship and have endless hours of bus sing a longs (initiated by yours truly) and discussions over everything from sarcasm in different cultures to the Egyptian Revolution and the prospects for its future. oh, and we also had a mission of creating the plans for social businesses that would benefit Egypt and forge greater ties between Egypt and the US.

The first 2 weeks we spent in Egypt, traveling around to visit sites, businesses and listen to speakers from the government, business and education worlds, while staying at the lovely dorms at the new campus of the American University in Cairo. Here we identified social problems and started coming up with business plans that would address our problem areas, culminating in a final pitch on the last day where a group of Egyptian Business leaders shredded our hopes and dreams with a chain-saw.

The second two weeks we tried to keep working on the putting the pieces back together but mostly fiddled with Skype and Google+ and decided it would be easier to sleep alot and post on each others Facebook walls :D

The Third and Final Phase took place in Washington DC, where we all stayed in the Dupont Circle Hotel and at first really enjoyed DC, then met tons of super interesting speakers (like the former deputy secretary of defense and current president of CSIS, the former mayor of DC, the CEO of DCs fastest growing company, and the Ambassador from Egypt, among others!), then had to work ALOT, then enjoyed DC even more! This all culminated in another Final Pitch, this time to a panel of American venture capitalists and Business Leaders who then proceeded to... be alot nicer than we had expected, gave us great feedback and told us our plans were excellent!

All in all in was a fantastic intro to many new things for me, particularly in entrepreneurship and business formation, and I'm sure the many skills and connections will prove invaluable both in the immediate future and on down the long and winding road (dah dah, dah dah, daaa)

Ok next post I really will enter the present, pinkyswear

(Yet another) Updater Interlude

Salaam Alaykum!

For anyone who may still upon occassion pass by this blog (hopefully not like a ship in the night), you have probably noticed that not much has happened in a while... OR HAS IT??

The fact is, yet again, I have been remiss in my blog duties (bluties?) and haven't updated in quite awhile, much like the last trip to the middle east when I left us hanging after a *thrilling* part one story of a trip to Syria, I have left "us" hanging once again, somewhere in Jaipur if I recall correctly...

Now if my virtual self were to be accorded a physical manifestation, he could be assumed to have remained in "Double-Jaipurdy" for quite some time now. For the living, physically embodied Siler, this is not the case though, and a few things have happened since we left our protagonist, trekking through the forts of the old Marahaja and fending of men with mangoes and boundless curiosity.

In summary:

I left Jaipur, finished my internship in Bagar, went to Delhi and stayed with Shubhi in her delightful abode where I ate meat! and was eaten by her "delightful" dog Mischief. Planned to meet up with Lindsey and go to Agra, Went to the wrong train station in Delhi, finally found a bus to Agra, barely saw Agra fort and the Taj Mahal, ran to the next train, parted ways with Lindsey, arrived in Amritsar. Had a truly amazing experience at the Golden Temple where I had free lodging and meals (!!!!) Saw the crazy border closing ceremony between the goose-steppers and shouters of Pakistan and the Shouters and goose-steppers of India. Went back to Delhi and stayed with Sam, Michelle and Sean in The Den Of Disease. Went to Kujaraho and saw pornographic temples :P Became somewhat ill, escaped the Den of Disease, went to Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Udaipur (the Most Romantic City on Earth), returned to Delhi and the Den of Disease :( left with Sam for a healing and rough and tumble (at the same time!) jaunt through Lucknow, Varanasi, Pokara, Kathmandu, Darjeeling and Kolkata. Missed our Fastest Train in India, Took the LONGEST TRAIN RIDE EVER. Arrived in Delhi to return home to the USofA.

whew. After that I went back to Penn, had no sleep but lots of fun, wrote a thesis (also no sleep but NOT fun), graduated, came home to NC.

That should be enough update for now, bring us up to the present day in the next post, I promise!