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Chillaxin at Cafe Borrone

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Easter Egg Making

Back in the early 1970s my mom got turned on to Ukranian Egg making (known as Psyanky).  The rich vegetable dyes, the beeswax candles, the delicate tools were all part of the process.  Over 35 years later, we still have some of the eggs from those early years which we treasure like old photos. 

This year we invited friends, colleagues and students to join us in making eggs.  Tomorrow is the annual Lythcott-Haims/Hornik Easter Ritual with a very elaborate cerebral scavenger hunt designed by Dan and David Hornik.

Our Inauguration Celebration Watch Party

7:30 am, Palo Alto, CA Inauguration Watch Party

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Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig

How good it felt to waken in my own bed Saturday morning, smushed in between Dan and Avery -- who cried out "Mama" in the middle of the night and found solace in joining us.  Thanks to a brilliant 7 hour sleep on the plane ride home from London, I slept through the California night both Friday and Saturday nights.  Call it famous last words, but I seem to be over the jet lag!

Last Night in Africa: Cairo

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We arrived in Cairo in the wee hours of Thursday morning.  By all appearances it was 1st world, the hotel’s towers soaring to the sky, its interior adorned in marble, fine wood, and plush furnishings, it’s amenities a pool that meandered past a sunken swim-up bar, and a replica of a pyramid.  Yet, I felt more out of sorts than I did in poorest Ghana or the Soweto shantytown.  

Curiously, none of the hotel staff would make eye contact with me or give me the time of day, and I and others were left to struggle with our bags when we arrived from the airport at 3am.  The hotel was so massive it was a long walk, with some stairs included, to the building in which our rooms were located.  I could have made good use of a porter – something I rarely if ever do.  It made me feel cranky and I thought maybe I was just oversensitive because of the late hour and the week we’d had, but by the next morning as we gathered for an overflowing array of culinary delights at the buffet breakfast, amidst the bustle of important people for whom this hotel was a gathering place, a fellow female traveler said out loud what I had been sensing.  As women we were second class citizens at best.  At worst, we were just dust particles caught up in the energy of that hotel.  The discourtesy we experienced – the being utterly ignored – stood in starkest contrast to the kind thoughtfulness which we had experienced in the 8 preceding countries (South Africa included).  

Egypt did not feel like Africa, and indeed, I learned many Egyptians do not think of it as so.

After the fair at the International School in Cairo (our final fair) – where for the first time I encountered a number of cocky, entitled, impatient, students – we headed back to the hotel.  We passed the tomb of Anwar Sadat (above) which rests in this beautiful modern pyramid built directly across from where he was slain.  My mind recalled the pride of our family and our nation when President Jimmy Carter brokered the peace accords between Sadat and Menacham Begin of Israel.  I think I was about 12 years old when it happened.

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As the day turned to night we headed for our closing dinner on a Nile riverboat.  The boat held a few hundred of us, each group seated around large round or rectangular tables. By an hour into the ride, the enclosed dining room was a smoky haze  – no prohibition on indoor smoking here – and the music was loud enough to inhibit any kind of dinner conversation.  A talented male dancer twirled his body and whirled his cape to the beat of the musician’s drum, and he was followed by the top billed show of the evening – the belly dancer.  

Without question, I’m no prude.  Yet I felt real disgust as I watched most of the men – Egyptian, American, and otherwise – stare at this scantily clothed woman whose bikini top compressed her breasts and lifted them up and out for the world to see. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how this type of entertainment existed in a culture where women choose or are made to wrap themselves in whole or in part in material that prevents their bodies from being seen.  I felt like it was 1979 in America – e.g., before smoking laws or sexual harassment prohibitions were in full effect.  

I found myself thinking, “This is my last night in Africa?”  And so it was.

Travel Exhaustion

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I haven’t written much since my stay at the Tarangire National Park (Treetops Hotel) in Tanzania.  That was all of last weekend ago, but in the time since our Land Rover pulled out and away from that enchanted place, I have been caught up in a whirlwind of students, schools, printed brochures and business cards in four different countries in as many days, anchored only by surety of a hotel bed for 4 or 5 hours’ rest, and a homecooked meal from a local host so grateful for our visit.  (Before coming I might have wondered, “what will I eat in Africa?” but I assure you, food has been no problem!)  The week prior was exactly the same.  I'm running on fumes and avoid looking at myself in mirrors.  This work is grueling, though I feel lucky to be doing it.

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It’s hard to convey just how much of an exhausting whirlwind this trip has been, but let me try.  After driving out of Treetops on Sunday, we flew to the miniscule Kiliminjaro International Airport, so-named presumably because of the chartered flights of foreigners who intend to climb “Kili,” as they affectionately call the majestic mountain, or do safari.  We caught lunch and a nap at this gorgeous hotel whose rooms were elegant huts gathered around a lake.  We had been at this same place on Friday night – though overnight, and in driving rain, so it’s splendor was unknown to us until our return.  

By evening Sunday we were flying again, this time to coastal Dar Es Salaam, still in Tanzania.  We got in by midnight and the following day did a college fair in the morning followed by a second one in the evening.  Most of the team had the afternoon off on Monday but there were five Early Decision Applicants to Stanford at International School of Tanganika I had to meet, and I enjoyed the opportunity to connect meaningfully with a small set of students – 3 native Tanzanians, 1 American, 1 Indian -- during the 45 minutes we spent together, though I did have to summon energy and passion from the

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deepest recesses of my body and soul.  The evening visit was particularly meaningful for me, as I got to deliver to eager parents a precious package a Tanzanian Stanford freshmen had asked me to bring to her family.  During the brief introduction each school’s rep made, I told the gathered crowd how meaningful it was for me to have hugged a young woman on the eve of leaving Stanford on October 26, and to have hugged her parents that night.  This was an opportunity for the Dean of Freshmen to flourish on a tour that was otherwise admissions-focused.  I was bringing news of the wellbeing of their daughter, looking them in the eye to reassure them that she was in a good place, half a world away.  

After the evening college fair ended at 9pm, we got back to the hotel and slept for about 4 hours, needing to check out of our hotel at the truly ungodly hour of 3:45 am Tuesday to make our flight to Nairobi, Kenya.  In Kenya we also had two college fairs to do, each a long drive from the airport and from each other.  We caught cat naps on the bus and refreshed our breaths with gum, then we’d burst onto the scene with our schools’ formal cloth table drape and fancy printed materials and haul ourselves up to the microphone to do as peppy an intro as possible, and then steady ourselves for the onslaught of inquiries.   The second school in Kenya was called “Brookhouse,” a private school resembling Hogwarts.  I was stunned at the opulence and found myself wishing my kids could go to a school like that.  It was my turn to give the presentation to all gathered about what we mean by a “liberal arts education” and I summoned all I had to try to engage with the kids the way I would do back home at Stanford.  I also tossed out an Obama button to the kid who could name which of the 17 schools traveling on the tour Michelle Obama attended (Princeton) and another to the kid who could name Barack’s alma mater (Columbia). 

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At dinner in the hotel I met Laban Oswago and Justice Odeny – two gentlemen (above) who spotted my Obama button and began to beam.  Turns out they are Luo – the minority ethnic group Obama’s father belonged to – and the Luo and really all Kenyans love Obama as much as we do.  I instantly knew that it would be these two who would end up with the shirts I had brought to give away.  I was a small celebrity in the hotel by this point and was giving away much of the remainder of my Obama loot.  11pm was now the end of the day Tuesday, a day that began at 3:45 am for me.  

I slept 4-5 hours in my Nairobi hotel (waking fitfully every 90 minutes for fear of over-sleeping) only to have to wake up and pack for a 4:30am Wednesday checkout of the hotel for our flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Donkeys walked through the busy streets in Addis (left), as we made our way to our one college fair there.  Sensing our exhaustion, the host plied us with coffee, tea, and delicious donuts and buns.  With only one fair that day, we had a little down-time for shopping so I picked up

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a few more goodies, and then we were off to a wonderful dinner of classic Ethiopian fare and entertainment, and the presence of Obamamania not too subtly tacked to the entrance wall.  By 9pm we were in the Addis airport, getting ready to board a plane to Cairo, Egypt where we arrived at 1:30am Thursday.  I’ll say more about Cairo in the next note while I close out here on the subject of exhaustion.

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Don’t take me as complaining.  This trip is so important to Stanford and to all the colleges and universities represented along with mine, and to me personally.  In the course of 17 days, our official count says we met with 3,455 young people who, depending on the country, were interested (South Africa; Egypt) or quite eager (Ghana; Swaziland; Zambia; Tanzania; Kenya; Ethiopia) or desperate (Zimbabwe) to learn about studying in the U.S. and Canada.   Not all 3,455 of those young people visited the Stanford table, but a good number of them did.  I was left after each fair feeling trampled under the weight of their hopes, needs and questions.

Harare, Zimbabwe, was my lowpoint. At the end of a college fair that brought us our largest bounty of 750 students, I was being told repeatedly to close down my table so as to keep our group on schedule, yet a student and parent who had been waiting patiently finally had their chance to ask their questions.  As I felt the unforgiving tension of the of tour’s need to stay on time, and the need of this young girl to learn about how to unearth evidence of opportunities hidden half a world away, tears of exasperation sprang to my eyes.  Under the Mugabe regime they are desperate in Zimbabwe, just desperate.  And being in that throng the sweaty beads of desperation emerged from my skin as well.  It was hard to think straight.  In my confusion and exhaustion, the school supplies I’d brought from home for the local Zimbabwean high school hosting us stayed in my bag until days and countries later when I realized I’d missed the dropoff.  Pens and pencils that could have made such a difference in Zim will just merge themselves into the overflowing abundance of the pen and pencil holders in my home.  From drought to plenty in mere days. 

And man, do I need some sleep.

Pulling Away

It is 4am Tuesday in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and our little tour bus pulls out into the black night to carry us to the airport. We've flown somewhere almost every day, and certainly every two of three. Today it is on to Nairobi, Kenya.

As we round the bend into the final stretch of this trip feeling the inevitable tug of the Western time frame and "must-do" mindset, I find myself wanting to stave off that inevitable aspect of my return.

Africa has been good to me and good for me. With three days to go I can't yet know which of its pieces will stick with me. But there were small tears in my eyes on this third-to-last departure trip. The tears you cry when you prepare to say goodbye to someone you may never see again.

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It is 6:30 a.m. and I am sitting in a cozy bed in my Baobab tree in Tanzania. Through the 180 degrees of canvas screen walls, I can see an ocean of land stretching miles, ages, centuries in front of me. And the sounds of the murmuring animals, each with their own call, song, or sigh, fall into rhythm with one another, like drops of water in a retreating ebb tide gently rising and falling as it is pulled toward the other side of the earth.

My wake up call was delivered by a man with a tray of coffee and cookies, who opened the trap door from down below that prevents animals from climbing up the stairs at night. The tree shakes slightly when the trap door is opened, and so I was jostled from my deep sleep by what felt yesterday like a small earthquake, but which today I knew was the first human being who would see me this morning with my squashed face, my crazy hair, my soft, wrinkled Pandora t-shirt and my torn flannel PJ bottoms. The shaking tree, not the person, is actually the wake up call, for I need to be awake to unlock the door, greet him at the top of the stairs, and make way for the tray holding the drink that will hasten my emergence into the waking world.

Ten days into my trip I have almost forgotten what day it is. And time is just an adjective, not an urgent, insistent, unforgiving master. Except, that is, on a morning like this, when a small plane sits on an dirt airstrip a few hours drive away, waiting to pull us back to where we need to be. I will be leaving Treetops in an hour, but I don't suppose it will ever leave me.

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