The end of an era....

Yesterday marked the end of my time at the DM team. I must say that I leave with mixed emotions having been there for almost two and a half years. What began as a six week short term consultancy turned into a terrific period of personal and professional growth and I owe much of that to Joyita and Shiyana for believing in me and allowing me to stay on the team as a JPA.

My overriding emotion then is nostalgia unfortunately, for what the team was and nostalgia in the sense of what I think that the team and the program could potentially accomplish in the future with honest, strategic leadership.

As I told our HR representative, it is easy for the "older" members of the team to look back on Joyita's tenure with rose-colored glasses, recalling how the team functioned more as a, well, dysfunctional family. But it functioned, and the prevailing currents running through the team were not fear, self doubt and paranoia (am I being a bit dramatic in my rendering of the work environment perhaps?... naaaaaaaaaah....).

The DM is truly a place where innovation and the impact of development on a small scale are tangibles, offering a unique perspective on the World Bank and its operations. The social entrepreneurs I had the pleasure of working with include Florence Cassassuce who is designing UV Buckets to provide potable water to rural communities in Baja California, Mexico; Ranga Bodavala who has extended his LED light empire throughout India and beginning in Africa, a truly inspiring man whom I hope to meet with in India; BP Agrawal who is always thinking of a new idea, whether it be harvesting rainwater in Rajasthan or designing and providing health kiosks for updated medical information; Ian Thorpe, whose organization, PumpAid, is rapidly scaling up and replicating throughout Africa to install innovative elephant pumps to provide access to water. These will be my memories of the DM....

In the end, I learned a great deal, had the opportunity to work with some fantastic people who I will remain in touch with post-Bank life and will miss very much, and of course it's where I met John. All in all, I guess I came out on top in the deal.

My email to the DM team past and present:
A special thanks to everyone; after almost two and a half years working at the DM, today is my last day at the Bank. In two weeks I will be moving to Delhi to work with an NGO there.

I have truly enjoyed my experience at the Bank and the DM and have grown both professionally and personally - something I especially have you all to thank for.

Recently, I told someone familiar with the DM that I was moving to India to work with an NGO, to which he responded that it was a "very DM thing to do". Thinking back, I take it as a compliment that working on a small-scale, local level is truly the DM way; focusing on social entrepreneurs, projects and beneficiaries is what the DM embodied for me. It is my sincere hope that the program continues to focus on our projects and their impact on the ground.
In the next stage of the DM's growth, I hope that a program which identifies, supports and encourages innovation in the field will do the same at a programmatic level, promoting strategic, engaging, inclusive and open-minded ideas and input from the whole team. I look forward to watching the program grow and move forward.
It has been a sincere pleasure working with each of you and I hope that we keep in touch in the future. If you ever find yourself in Delhi please be in touch.

Supplies!!!

Last Saturday John was able to pull a fast one on me and threw a surprise going away party at Bourbon. Many thanks to everyone who came out, but not many thanks to those who put bets on me getting dysentery in the double digit number of times. Come on people, I only have enough medicine for two attacks!
The transient nature of this city has really hit home in the past few weeks as people are leaving to start anew in other cities (Uyennie, Melinda, Smelly Elly). Perhaps that's one of the reasons I don't know if I want to settle down in D.C. permanently if you know that close friends are going to be coming and going all the time (more coming than going hopefully). Anywho, here are some pics from Saturday night.

Lightly housekeeping

"Some people say that the best stories have no words. They weren't brought up on Lighthousekeeping. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case always the wrong size to fit the template called language.
I know that. But I know something else too, because I was brought up to Lighthousekeeping. Turn down the daily noise and at first there is the relief of silence. And then, very quickly, as quiet as light, meaning returns. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken."
~ Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

"She never had time. He came and went.
Why didn't Babel Dark marry Molly?
He doubted her. You must never doubt the one you love.
But they might not be telling you the truth.
Never mind that. You tell them the truth.
What do you mean?
You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own.
So what should I say?
When?
When I love someone?
You should say it."
~ Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

Where the hell is Matt?

"Where the Hell is Matt?" is one of my all time favorite videos that I've seen so far - that and the lion reuniting with his English mates is a tear jerker as well. The song is gorgeous and is apparently some 17 year old Bengali girl that lives in Minnesota that Matt and his wife heard and asked to record this version .... I imagine myself dancing to this song in various places in India next year, even if only in my head.... Below are the lyrics to the poem that is used as the inspiration for the song in the video (also downloadable on amazon and itunes, "Praan" by Garry Schyman). Remember to watch the video in high definition.

"Stream of Life" by Rabindranath Tagore
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and dayruns through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earthin numberless blades of grassand breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birthand of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

All Things DC...

As my time in DC winds down, I am in pursuit of any and all things that epitomize and encapsulate life in DC... or just anything that I haven't done in the past three years here, such as a visit to the Philips Collection a few weeks ago (highly recommend on a free weekday to see Matisse, Van Gogh and Renoir's The Boating Party). Last night we went to Screen on the Green, a thoroughly DC affair where old movies are shown on the Mall. The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine - a new movie for us all that openly highlights the sex lives of insurance company workers. Shocking, I know. Cheating husbands "rent" out Jack Lemmon's apartment to take their flavors of the week/month. An old take on the Korean yeogwan perhaps? A quintessential DC moment - though I am still perplexed about the, let's-get-up-and-dance-to-the-HBO-music-scheme at the beginning of the film - and I'm looking forward to more in the weeks to come.

Rushdie and Shalimar

"You have come into our story at the end. ... If my dear father were still with us he could answer all your questions. But maybe the truth is that, as he used to say, our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets. Maybe too much time has passed for you and you will have to accept , I'm sorry to say it, that there are things about your experience you will never understand. My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility, the silence of the unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind. Such was his credo." ~ Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

"For the rest of his life Max Ophuls would remember that instant during the shape of the conflict in Kashmir had seemed too great and alien for his Western mind to understand, and the sense of urgent need with which he had drawn his own experience around him, like a shawl. Had he been trying to understand, or to blind himself to his failure to do so? Did the mind discover likeless in the unlike in order to clarify the world, or to obscure the impossibility of such clarification? He didn't know the answer. But it was one hell of a question." ~ Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

"In the old stories, love made possible a kind of spiritual contact between lovers long separated by necessity or chance. In the days before telecommunications, true love itself was enough. A woman left at home would close her eyes and the power of her need would enable her to see her man on his ocean ship battling pirates with cutlass and pistol, her man in the battle's fray with his sword and shield, standing victorious among the corpses on some foreign field, her man crossing a distant desert whose sands were on fire, her man amid mountain peaks, drinking the driven snow. So long as he lived she would follow his journey, she would know the day-by-day of it, the hour-by-hour, would feel his elation and grief, would fight temptation with him and with him rejoice in the beauty of the world; and if he died a spear of love would fly back across the world to pierce her waiting, omniscient heart. It would be the same for him. In the midst of the desert's fire he would feel her cool hand on his cheek and in the heat of battle she would murmur words of love into his ear: live, live. And more: he would know her dailiness too, her moods, her illnesses, her labours, her loneliness, her thoughts. The bond of their communion would never break. That was what the stories said about love. That was what human beings knew love to be." ~ Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

Zadie Zadie, Literary Lady

"Esther's head was shaved like a boy's. Lying next to her, he felt he could hold that coconut head for the rest of his life. She could beat him in an arm wrestle and most arguments. She was bigger than he, and more beautiful. But he was tortured by the idea that she would grow old! He understood that in all likelihood this sort of thinking would lead him to die lonely, without anyone. He told himself the story that this was the great tragedy of his heart. The great tragedy of his heart was that it always needed to be told a story." ~ Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man

"Both knew this was their version of good-bye and the bottom line is there was something godly in it and here is Alex's (partial) list:
Sinatra's voice between 1948 and 1956
Donad O'Connor's right foot
The old route to school on a March morning
The letter א
Being inside her with her legs crossed round my hips
People falling over
Jokes
Overweight cats
Food
The films of Kitty Alexander
Relationships that do not involve blood or other fluids
Tobacco
Telling children that life is suffering
Alcohol
God
Smell of cinnamon
Esther"
~ Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man

"Suppose I weren't allowed the gestures people make when they don't know what else to do: clicking the buckle of my wristwatch strap, unbuttoning and rebuttoning my shirt, running my hands through my hair. In the end I'd have nothing to sustain me, I'd be lost." ~ Peter Handke, The Weight of the World

Tufts of Tufts

For some reason, the writers at Holy Taco don't think that Jumbo the elephant is able to strike fear into the hearts of our opponents...

But the tuft from tufts is pretty adorable....

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/03/20/9-college-mascots-that-should-be-real/

DM and dinos...

I probably should not post this until after I leave the World Bank, but www.qwantz.com was calling out with this cartoon... so applicable... well, minus the mannequins.

Annie Dillard

"After they married she learned to feel their skin as double-sided. They felt a pause. Theirs was too much feeling to push through the crack that led down to the dim world of time and stuff. That world was gone. They held themselves alert only in those few million cells where they touched. She learned from those cells his awareness and his courtesy. Love so sprang in her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again." ~ Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

"Was romantic love a modern invention? How long could it last requited, as unrequited? Does familiarity blur lovers' clear sight of essences and make surfaces look significant? Since love intensifies in parted lovers, presumably because the lovers forget and reimagine each other, is love them wholly false? How false? Thirty percent false? Sixty percent? Five?" ~ Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

"Only the lover sees what is real, he thought. Only the lover sees the beloved truly, inwardly. Far from being blind, love alone can see. Watching the sky now, and forever after, doubled his world. He felt he saw through Lou's eyes as an Aztec priest, having flayed an enemy, donned the skin. Or somewhat less so." ~ Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

All you need is love...

"A filthy homeless man is squatting with the American tourists and telling jokes in broken English. He is not looking at the girls' shaved legs but at the unfinished bottle of wine and sullen wedge of cheese. The Americans seem good-natured and pretend to laugh; I suppose the key to a good life is to gently overlook the truth and hope that at any moment we can all be reborn." ~ Simon Van Booy, The Secret Lives of People in Love

Flirting with Preparations

Suffering from a short bout of insomnia, I am sitting at John's computer trying to figure out how to approach the next 11 months of my life, the change that India is going to bring, and if I am truly prepared for such a change. In less than three weeks I will have quit my job at the World Bank and in less than a month I will be in another country far far away from my friends and family.

Thinking back on the times that I have removed myself from the safe context of "the known" I remember when Jan and Greg dropped me off at Tufts freshman year. We drove down to Haskell Hall, met my new roommate Ilia and then walked around the campus for a little bit before they announced that it was time for them to leave and start the long trip back to Montgomery, Alabama. I tried to hide my... fear?... and suggested a few other activities that we could do together before they left. But anyone who has met Jan and Greg know that driving is no small matter in Florey household, and there are traffic jams to avoid and time records to set. But it was far too uncool for a mature frosh to cry, so off they went.

Korea was a different story altogether - I was itching to go and live abroad, to my parents it was a known quantity having lived there for a few years and I honestly can't remember the goodbyes. I know that there were tears, but it was July and I would be home for Christmas so not to worry; six months was nothing to me and I was ready for a new adventure.

For India, there is a bit more at stake. Oh youthful exuberance, where have you gone? Being far from family doesn't seem like an added bonus anymore; learning how to live outside of a safe university/alabama bubble is no longer applicable; friendships, like all relationships, need cultivation and my correspondence skills have deteriorated since the exciting stationery days of Korea; job prospects (or lack thereof?) upon my return are already in the back of my mind. And then there's John... but that's a post for another sleep-deprived morning...