i got one life to live

five shots couldn't drop me, i took it and smiled!

2007-12-19T09:16:00.000-08:00

my fridge after making anatomy, psychology, gerontology and chemistry my unholy bitch. who's too cool for school? it's me.

parting don't always mean goodbye

2007-12-10T11:20:00.000-08:00

yeah, it's a little soft but it's so damn cute.

little light of mine, i'mna let it shine

2007-12-09T12:51:00.001-08:00

the kid on the left is playing with one of those find-the-ignition-LED things you get for your keychain. what a blue LED is doing in saharan africa i don't know.

write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quick - rewrite it

2007-12-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

there is no cool way to tell someone your hobby is cutting things out of magazines and making collages.

apple-C apple-V!

my gear is in and i'm in the in crowd

2007-12-01T15:41:00.000-08:00

i make rat's moves, i sing rat's blues

2007-11-29T08:23:00.000-08:00

been sorting through some old takes as i organize my photo archive. this one's from 2005. henry rollins talked into it. henry rollins is awesome.

wondering blithely what the dinner bell will bring

2007-11-28T17:05:00.000-08:00

the host family gets ready to break the ramadan fast. that mat's usually where we ate dinner every night. s'a lot comfier than it looks.

with your silhouette when the sunlight dims into your eyes where the moonlight swims

2007-11-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

my host sister (and cat's namesake) hadiza.

heff-a-lumps and woozles

2007-11-24T16:54:00.000-08:00

and giraffelopes!

there's a low moon caught in your tangles

2007-11-23T10:38:00.001-08:00

two disappointed believers, two people playing the game

2007-11-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

sometimes i forget how awesome paul simon is.

the difference a day makes

2007-11-21T18:34:00.001-08:00

so i guess it's winter now.

drive slow I've never been this way before

2007-11-20T14:57:00.001-08:00

warning: operating camera and motor vehicle simultaneously may be hazardous to your health.

2007-11-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

a friend of my host-sister. it's likely that she's wearing nail polish on her lips. in west africa, any make-up is the right make-up.

i couldn't tell the weight of the world was on your shoulders

2007-11-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

hausa women line up at a Médecins Sans Frontières baby weighing.

summer drought come hard that year

2007-11-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

zarma women (and alexis there on the right) drawing water in the afternoon.

i follow to the edge of the earth and i fall off

2007-11-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

some leaves from last month. the fall is by far my favorite time of year.

and the flowers she sent and the flowers she said she sent are all equally dead

2007-11-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

i don't know why there were 3 dozen roses lying on the sorting table of my apartment's laundry room, but here they are.

you must keep moving friend, but I am heading home

2007-05-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

2 hemispheres. 11 countries. 4.5 months.

it seems like a dream. like it somehow didn't happen. was i really scraping pig stys two months ago? was machu picchu real? and how about our jeep breaking down at 4,500 meters in southern bolivia? hell, it's hard to believe i've spent the last week wandering around buenos aires.

buenos. aires. the most invigoratingly cultural city i've ever been. it seems like i should have something really profound to say for my last international blog post for a while. something inspiring to sum up the magnanimity of intercontinental travel. but right now i'm just excited to get back to see my friends and family. to celebrate my sister's 21st birthday. to go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant with one of my best friends. to go splashing around in alyssa's parents pool with some old college buddies, some rockin' tunes and, of course, alyssa's momma's cooking.

so, in lieu of kris' words of inspiration, here's a few things about buenos aires you might find interesting. i did anyways.

1. everyone smokes and you can smoke everywhere. you look especially cool if you do it while walking, and under age.

2. after a week, i still have no idea when/if argentinians eat breakfast or lunch. for that matter, when they sleep.

3. argentinians dress cooler than you.

4. 24-hour flowershops.

5. "I'm not into your passport photo, I just like your nose." 'you better, you bet' the who

6. argentinians love the simpsons.

7. 'take my breath away', in any context is hilarious. especially in a taxi at earsplitting volume.

8. batman and papa noel got drunk together yesterday. at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. i saw them first at the sidewalk cafe i had lunch at, then later near the palermo shopping district, and finally stumbling down the street together just after the streetlights came on. it didn't make sense to me either.

"you're coming back to america, kris. what're ya gonna do first?"

i'm goin' out for mexican!

see y'all soon.

outrageous the food they try to serve

2007-05-14T06:32:00.000-07:00

i've been struggling with the best way to write about what its been like strolling around buenos aires the last week. there's been a lot of walking around, some museum hunting and some shopping as well, but nothing's seemed like it stood out as all that fantastic. but then it hit me. food! i mean, not literally, like a pie in the face but, well, you get the idea.

so here, in chronological order, are my adventures in buenos airesian gastronomy.

got here early wednesday morning. after a great night spent on a first-class bus i got my hostel and went for a walk-about. it's nice to just wander around and get lost on the first day, helps get the bearings. tried to find the modern art museum. couldn't. so my first meal:

wednesday: dinner wasn't great. went cheap and fast, but filling. breaded and fried fish filet with a whopping pile of french fries washed down with a Quilmes lager. awesome, but heavy food isn't the best idea before taking tango lessons. beer, however, is.
thursday: the next day i took a stroll. all the way to the hip and trendy palermo viejo neighborhood; home to argentinian couteur and some damn fine restaurants. lunch was spent at a sidewalk cafe. had the set menu of the day. the entrada: two chorizo-style chicken bon-bons. red pepper, chicken and spices in sausage sleeves lightly fried and served on a bed of arugula. the main course: beef brisket cuts marinated in honey, lightly smoked and served with wedges of something resembling a sweet potato. finish off with a coconut tort drizzled in caramel. the presentation on both was fantastic. all this with a nice glass of Mendoza Valley malbec. total cost: $7
friday: kept it simple the next day. went to the museum of history and another dedicated to turn of the 20th century house decor; this old french-style mansion with a beautiful dining room and sculptures by rodin all about.

had snacks for lunch. dinner at a nice, economic (cheap) italian place. napolitano pizza for one, loaded with cheese and a glass of the house red.
saturday: when in buenos aires, it's pretty much obligatory to do some shopping. after 5 months of wearing the same two pairs of jeans it´s a necessity. i've been lusting after a black, pinstripe suit for months and now i have one. I rule!

lunch was at a nice ceramics store slash cafe. i had the best caesar salad. extra points for the home-made croutons.

dinner was an ok steak, smothered in a mushroom sauce garnished with house-fried potato chips. the steak was bleeding red but a bit tough. the wine was nice, though. a fruity, full-bodied malbec by the Bianchi bodega. beth is excited.
sunday: spent the day wandering around the san telmo antiques market. its this great street market packed with old, european-import antiques; tons of designer shops selling argentinean couteur; and music everywhere. there were guys on guitar, guitar duos playing for tango dancers, full on bands with three accordions and strings. by far the best cultural day here.

speaking of argentine culture, a note about dining in the capitol: argentinians eat late. really late. for example, i went to dinner, starving, at 9:30. the only people in the restaurant until 10:30 were myself and a nice girl from oklahoma. i respect the idea of late dining; it makes one feel very cosmopolitan. my belly, however, is ready to get back to more reasonable dining hours.

the food was incredible. went to this nice italian bistro around the corner. red table cloths, bi-lingual servers in bowties. pretty stellar. to start i had a nice, light salad followed by an impeccable spaghetti in red sauce with strips of smoked salmon and generous helpings of red and black caviar. easily the finest pasta i've ever had. finished it off with a surprisingly delicious 'macaroni and cheese' ice cream.

today will be spent roaming around a few mid-town museums, maybe a little more shopping and probably some book reading - currently in the middle of malcolm x's biography. he was born in omaha. this would be something to be proud of if his family hadn't been run out of town by the klan.

i've finished my souvenir shopping, so all that's left is to relax and enjoy one of the most exciting cities i've ever seen. i'll be home at 11:30 inthe morning on thursday. go air canada!

2007-05-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

i learned the basics of a tango last week with a nice (and beautiful) swedish girl.

as i write this, a local radio station is playing a lesser known single by the Cranberries.

you find when you come travelling that you tend to run into a lot of people who are doing more or less the same thing as you are. travelling the world. seeing the cultural centers. exploring ancient ruins. looking for a good time. from northern mexico down to patagonia, any city with a hot shower, cheap hostel and/or free breakfast is bound to have attracted some gringos for some reason or another.

got busted so i went back to omaha to live

2007-05-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

i've been abroad for 3 months and 17 days. or something like that. that's a pretty long time. as y'all might remember, i agreed to this trip not a week after i flew out of africa last fall. i didn't know what i was gonna do that next week, much less next month or year, so when alyssa asked i said,"well, duh, of course i'm going with you."

since then i've logged dozens of hours on international busses, some good and some, well, i'm still alive anyways. it's been three months of new people, foods, experiences and all the incredible bits that come with a trip like this. and now its time to come home.

i've decided to cut the trip short by a few weeks and get back to nebraska. it's funny. despite carnivale in panama, the jungles of ecuador and even machu picchu right now i'm excited about buying lamps for an apartment and getting a job.

i know. i know. i used to be cool. i don't know what happened either.

so i'm gonna hang around northern argentina for a bit more. eat some steak, buy a suit in buenos aires, maybe visit a big ass waterfall and then next wednesday i'm flying to toledo, chicago and finally home sweet home.

it's been a helluva trip, but i'm really excited to see everyone back home. so angela, get my knife wrapped up, mom and dad, get excited about quinua soup and chile rellenos, and have no fear karly; i'll be home in time for your birthday.

i got a heartbeat produced by god and boy do it sound hard

2007-05-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

seeing as how this photoblog of mine hasn´t had a photo on it in while, i refer you to alyssa´s blogspot page. she and her ibook have been reunited, which means photos photos photos. check it out.

as for me, i´m in northern argentina. i had the best steak of my life last night. it cost 6 dollars. then i went dancing with some cool english girls until 4 in the morning. life does not suck.

i´ve been thinking about coming home a little earlier than planned. updates to follow.

p.s. went with a different template for the ól bloggerino. this ones got a bit more character to it, wouldn´t ya say?

we got to dig dig dig, from the morning till the night

2007-05-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

some of you will be disappointed. some of you will relax.

i didn't get to play with dynamite or with tnt last week. a bummer, indeed.

i did get to put on some goofy clothes and go trudging through an old, but functioning mine shaft, though.

the tour was great. it was a group of about 8 of us and our tour guide Fredi Silver (not sure if that's his real name). after being outfitted in our grey overpants, matching jacket and super cool helmet complete with headlamp we were ready to head out into public. we made a quick stop to pick up a backpack's worth of gifts for the miners (more on that in a bit) then piled into our bus and up the mountain we went. this one in fact

half way up we came to a stop outside the two-meter high entrance to the santa maria mine, one of dozens of mines operating. 500-year-old cerro rico mine was the heart of spain's silver lode with native workers pulling up tons of silver to be sent to europe. the mine was so prosperous the city of potosi became the largest city in the americas, and one of the largest in the world. there was so much silver in its mines the town's name was, and still is, a spanish idiom for ostentatious wealth.

but then the silver ran out. this is where we got our civics of cooperative mining lecture.

bolivia's mining industry was nationalized during the revolution in the 1950s. though the silver vein is all but non-existant today, there's still lodes of tin, zinc and other minerals to be pulled. The miners are organised into cooperatives and lease their respective sections of the mine from the government for a fee of 6% of their earnings. each mine is run by 30-40 miners who can set their own hours but often work a slaves pace given the saturated tin market.

so here we have several dozen miners, ranging in age from 13-55 (at least that i saw that day) working long hours in poorly ventilated mine shafts with nothing but hammers and dynamite. and they let us gringos put on helmets and have a look-see.

after paying government fees, cooperative fees, etc., doesn't allow for a lot of luxuries. here's where those gifts we picked up earlier come in. the tour groups bring in bags of small luxuries to give the to the miners you come across on the tour. it's sort of a "thanks for letting us watch you work your ass off" thing.

ours included.

- a couple bags of coca leaves: coca leaves are legal in bolivia, cocaine is not. the miners chew the leaves for energy and concentration. the miners don't eat anything but a few large handfuls of coca leaves during their work shift. bad luck, they say.

- a couple packs of cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes

- a three liter bottle of orange soda

- a miner's gift bag including, (1) stick dynamite, (1) bag of tnt, (1) four-minute fuse, and (1) detonator.

- 96%-proof alcohol distilled from sugar cane. 1 liter good for six heavy-set miners on a friday night. comes in a plastic jug not unlike that 2-dollar anti-freeze they sell in gas stations. our guide says it's only consumed on days-off and special occasions, but the the plastic bottles scattered all over the mine suggest otherwise. most of the deaths in the mine aren't due to cave-ins or toxic gas but to alcohol related falls.

so armed with all this we clawed, clambered, shimmied and spelunked our way through the 30-meter deep mine. the main passages were barely tall enough to stand in, and the mines arteries were often barely large enough to squeeze through. i'm not a claustrophobic person, but when you realized you're surrounded on all sides by grimy rock and breathing thick, dusty air several meters underground it's easy to get that panicy feeling.

but i survived. we all did.

i'm still not quite sure how i feel about offering up third-world working conditions as tourist attractions. the miners seem receptive to the steady stream of curious gringos, but that doesn't do much to change the feeling that this isn't somewhere a lanky kid from middle america should be. the workers are independent, sure, but it's hard to believe that work like this is totally voluntary. especially for that 15-year-old kid who was definitely not new to the job.

from potosi, about 4,000 meters up, i'm off to uyuni to visit the salt flats. the andes are beautiful, no doubt, but i'm definitely looking forward to getting down to some more reasonable altitudes. until later.

meant to raise these hands with quiet all about me

2007-05-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

I ended up staying an extra night in Sucre to check out this group of dancers performing a free show at the 3 of February theater. (they love to name plazas, theaters, restaurants and cab companies after dates. it's a bit like calling memorial stadium July 4th Stadium. go figure)a couple observations i wrote down in my brand new, nerdtastical pocket notebook.

- the theater's smallish, three tiers. the floor with seats and boxes. a loge level with more box seats and a gallery level.

- despite it being a free show, the people in the gallery are definitely younger, rowdier and seem of a lower class than the snooty, and pushy, middle class folk with seats on the floor.

- as the theater fills up they play some awesome 90's era singles over the PA. nothing says traditional-dance like 'smells like teen spirit' and 'the kid's ain't alright.'

- there are few things more entertaining than watching stuffy, uptight and generally well-endowed women shove their way through a bolivian crowd. especially when that crowd is digging on some local dance steps. agressively polite with a smattering of spite and indignation.

obligatory shout out - this post is dedicated to another awesometastic travel companion, ms. rosie freeman. by far the coolest girl from the isle of white i'll ever meet.

a rich man eats when he wishes; a poor man whenever he can

2007-04-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

dateline - sucre, bolivia. known as la ciudad blanca owing to the colonial-era tradition of painting all the buildings in the city's center white. sucre's also where bolivia's declaration of independence was written, it's first national capitol and home to the country's supreme court. they make some killer chocolate hear, too (dark chocolate with pistachio cream is a fav.)

it reminds me a lot of oaxaca - alyssa and i's first travel destination out of mexico city all the way back in january. the food is incredible, the climate a great balance of dry mountain coolness and the people are really friendly. but more than that, it feels like sucre's a start to a new trip.

as y'all know, alyssa headed back to nebraska a week or so ago. since our english friend, who we'd met on the farm in ecuador, were both going south from cuzco we've been travelling together since then. after getting into sucre we've gone our seperate ways with rosie staying with some friends and yours truly officially flying solo. i've got a single room and can now officially walk around my hotel room naked.

parte uno.

so, yesterday morning i was sitting in the park yesterday my mulling over my first morning alone and listening to a nice mix of wilco, gang of four and my morning jacket. after a bit this shoe-shiner kid, looking to be about 14, posts up next to me on the bench. i pop my ear buds out and ask him what's up. he wants to know if i need my shoes cleaned. i tell him no, my canvas tennis shoes are fine the way they are. usually a polite brush off like that sends shoe shiners on their way, but this kid was persistent.

"well, how about you buy me a book instead?"

this took me for a bit of a loop. words like 'libro' don't usually come up when kids are asking for money. "¿como?," i said.

"how about you buy me a book for school. it's only 7 bolivianos (about ninety cents). i need it for school."

ok. i'd heard him right. he wants me to give him money so he buy a book for school. i think, bullshit. so i call him on it. "if you need it for school, why are you in the park bothering me on a tuesday morning instead of actually being in school?"

"school's not until the afternoon," he says.

ok. i'll bite. "so, what's the name of the book you need for school?" he tells me, but i can't quite understand him. i ask him to repeat it and i'm still not getting it. so he asks for a pen and paper so he can write it down. he scribbles for a second then hands me the scrap with "La Cabaña de Tío Tom" written on it.

it took a second.

la cabaña de tío ... holy crap. this chico is really asking me for a dollar to buy a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin for school. that's right. harriet beecher stowe. the best-selling book of the 19th century. that whole "american civil war thing."

i was so taken aback i hardly considered it. "yeah. i'll buy you a copy of uncle tom's cabin." "vamos," he said.

we walked about a block and a half off the square, with me still a little weary and walking a few feet behind in case this was some sort of elaborate scheme. but sure enough we walked into a libreria, he asked the lady at the counter for the book and from a shelf labelled "libros de escuela" she pulled a 40-page, large print, condensed and translated version of La Cabaña de Tío Tom. I smiled a sec and looked up at the kid. he didn't seem to have any interest in actually reading the book. but he did have that "i don't really care, but my teacher'll get on my case if i don't have it" attitude about him. so yeah. i bought it for him, said goodbye and went on my merry way.

part deux

a couple hours later, munching peanuts and listening to jeff tweedy singing about bandaids, touchdowns and other such things i sat down in the parque bolivar to do some people watching. it's a pretty nice park. lots of grass and pretty fancy landscaping given Sucre's dry climate. in the middle of the blocks-long park is a miniature eiffel tower built by some tin-baron who thought he was something special. it's red, cast-iron and has a spiral stair case that takes you up to the top of the 10-meter tower. pretty cool in a rusted, jagged metal sort of way.

so there i am, alone on a bench munching peanuts staring off into space when i notice there's someone standing in front of me waving to get my attention. i tried not to huff when i took my head phones out. "¿Si, señor?"

the guy in front of me was older, about 50ish and had the dark brown skin, round face and wide nose characteristics of the indegenous natives (genetic relatives of the incas, actually). he had on a well worn, but clean, pair of olive drab pants, dark brown sweatshirt and a dark green, heavy coat. on his feet he had on a pair of black sandals. his feet had a here-to-eternity look to them with callouses as thick as you'll ever see.

"Hola," he said. he had a friendly smile, albeit missing a few teeth. he had pretty severe cataracts in his right eye and obviously couldn't see through them.

i don't remember exactly what i said to that. it was most certainly something polite without being overly friendly. after all, i was just sitting around thinking. i didn't have any reason to be rude but i didn't want to be too enthusiastic, either. so we exchanged pleasantries. he asked me where i was from. what i did. if i was a student. what i studied. etc. after a bit, he sat down and we kept on chatting.

turns out his name is roberto and he's a campesino (essentially means rural, poor farmer) who lives between Sucre and Potosí, a large, former mining town to the west. his dad had worked in the mines for 29 years before passing away at the age of 79 a three years ago (life expectancy in bolivia is about 63, the lowest in south america). we talked (well, actually he talked and i listened) about life out in the rural parts. it's dry, education's crap, health care's even more crap, climate's crap. basically everything's crap. i brought up bolivia's presidente evo morales, who is a former campesino himeself and campaigned on a pro-rural platform. roberto likes the guy, but hopes evo can speed up change in bolivia like chavez is doing in venezuela. especially with health care and schools for the rural areas. kids in roberto's area have to walk two hours to the nearest school.

while he was talking, i could tell his bad eye wasn't the only thing roberto was dealing with physically. his fingers seemed short and swollen. he could bend the fingers of his right hand, but his left wouldn't move at all. as we talked i could tell the pitch for some money or help was coming and it did.

roberto had made the trip from the campo to sucre to find someone who could help him with his hand. sucre's home to a lot of universities, including a very reuptable medical school. roberto had hoped he'd be able to find someone who could help him find some help. he had managed to find a clinic that prescribed him some antibiotics but he didn't have the 75 bolivianos he needed to buy it. he had to make it back to the campo the next day and wanted some help.

i was standoffish at first. in the last year i've met some sincerely destitute people. so many that it's impossible to be able to help them all. alyssa and i've debated whether it helps or hurts to give money and never really came up with a good answer. i eventually decided to not give on the argument that it's more fair to not give than to try and make the on-the-spot decision about whether someone is poor enough for a handout.

but something about roberto made think differently.

the conversation went pretty circular from there on out, focusing on the medicine he needs, the problem with his hand, etc. while he talked i thought about three things: his sincere fear that he was going to lose his hands, what 75 bolivianos meant to him, and what 75 bolivianos meant to me. it's a little more than twice the cost of my single hotel room with private bath. it's dinner for two at one of the nicer restaurants in sucre. it's about 9 american dollars.

near as i could see it, there was no way i could not help him out. "ok, roberto. what kind of a person would i be if i didn't?" i told him in my broken spanish. he didn't react in any big way, but he seemed grateful. we walked up to the pharmacy about two blocks up the street, he handed the woman at the counter his prescription (he hadn't stop fingering it since i started talking to him) and i bought him his antibiotics.

roberto was reserved about it, but very grateful. we stepped out onto the sidewalk and he offered me his right arm in lieu of his hand to say thanks. i told him it was nothing offered a "va con dios" and went the other way, trying to not think about the obviously poor man in the pharmacy waiting area trying to get my attention.

you can't help everybody. and i don't which is better: helping some people knowing you can't help them all, or not helping anyone knowing you're treating everyone equally.

tomorrow i'm going to Potosí. it was formerly the heart of the spanish mining for silver. the mines are mostly dry now, but there are still local miners working what's left. not sure what i feel about third-world living and working conditions becoming tourist attractions. it promises to be eye opening. my guide book suggests bringing cigarettes, coca leaves, medicine or dynamite as small gifts for the miners. updates to follow.

mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

2007-04-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

top ten, and change, from our trip to machu picchu. in chronological order.

14. eating oreos at the bus station with rosie and alyssa while getting to know our new australian friends sam and nadie; a married couple from australia finishing up a months long trip in south america before taking jobs in london.

13. a very local bus trip through the very steep andes mountains mountains to the town of santa maria. even better? leaving at 8 p.m. and arriving at 3 a.m. only to catch another bus at 5 a.m.

12. waking up at 6 a.m., as the light starts to peek through, only to find we're on a one-lane road with a shear, hundred meter drop on one side and a whole lot of loose rock on the other.

11. riding a tiny platform on a zip line 50 feet above the raging (literally, raging) urubumba river.

10. a four-hour hike through the sacred valley over road and railway track in pouring rain as only the peruvian highlands can bring it.

9. not minding the rain one bit.

8. the bottle of wine shared at a bar in the hotel town of "aguas calientes" after hot showers and relatively dry clothes.

7. gladly waking up at 3 in the morning to hike from the base of machu picchu's mountain to the top in time for the day's first light. (ended up waking up the night watchman).

6. being the first people at the site and taking pictures of the ruins without the hundreds of tourists.

5. an incan city so large you can sit in one place for an hour completely on your own.

4. ernesto, the super cool guide who taught us all about the sun temple, incan sun dial, electromagnetism and the bastard spanish.

3. the beer that afternoon after 7 hours of exploring and hundreds of stairs climbed. as nadie said,"it always tastes better when ya've earned it."

2. the two days spent visiting other ruins in the sacred valley. and more importantly, the many meals spent with great company, great conversation and great food. (with much thanks going to the people at cuzco's hemp mundo cafe for their incredible smoked alpaca sandwich).

1. having expectations met and far exceeded by the most awe inspiring place i've ever seen.

---

at the moment i'm sitting in an internet cafe a few dozen meters from the southern shore of lake titicaca in southern bolivia. rosie and i are going out for fresh trout. hard to beat fresh caught fish. mmhmm.

-k

this blog post is dedicated to a fellow coworker, travel compatriot and, most notably, best friend alyssa schukar. as i write this she's getting ready to hop a plane to miama, dallas then omaha where her mom's apple cider waits.

hard to say from this side of the equator which is better - leaving for a south america adventure or going home to mom's cooking.

guess i'll find out in july. happy birthday mom.

voulez-vous dancer avec moi se soir

2007-04-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

we´ve busted out of trujillo. and it feels damn good. it definitely had its charms - awesome colonial era architecture, republic statues and some damn fine grilled chicken. we even visited pyramids with sacrificial altars and the whole lot. it´d be much cooler if it weren´t for the traffic. not only were the narrow streets packed to the curbs with thousands of agressive taxi drivers but a lack of traffic lights and turn signals made street crossing nothing short of Frogger en vivo. but we survived, saw a couple movies (go see Iwo Jima, don´t go see that new hilary swank flick) and made it to lima early sunday morning.

next to quito, ecuador, lima is one of the cooler big cities we´ve been too so far. we spent the morning touring an enormous franciscan monestary. the library was straight out of a discovery channel special. there were colonial era paintings everywhere, including an enormous room with a dozen life sized paintings of the last days of jesus´ life. the tour finishes with a walk through the catacombs - the underground, public cemetery home to at least 25,000 sets of bones. eerie and a touch macabre, but cool as hell.

just down the street we happened on the grand cathedral where easter sunday services were being given by the arch bishop. the ceremony was attended by dozens of tv and news outlets, the president of peru, his family, a contingent of the royal guard and yours truly. not a bad way to spend easter sunday.

from lima, alyssa and i took the night bus from the arid plains of the western flatlands east to cuzco and the andes. i can´t begin to describe what it was like to wake up just after sunrise and see the peaks of the andes out the bus window. incredible. we´re doing a short version of the hike up to machu pichu tomorrow and saturday and i promise to try and get a picture or two up. if only to prove that i´m really here and not, like, delivering pizzas somewhere in arkansas.

oh, and last night i went out dancing with a french girl and her belgian friend. the dj played ace of base. life does not suck.

-kris

you hung with me when all the others turned away

2007-04-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

well, our arrival in lima's been delayed as we're stalled in trujillo. this week is a huge travel time here, despite the lack of easter bunnies or that fake green grass that stains the jelly beans. the busses fares are more expensive and are all booked solid through the weekend. luckily there's a lull on saturday and we were able to get the night bus. so we'll be spending easter sunday on a double decker bus. it isn't new hats and glazed ham, but it'll do.

also, as a point of clarification. later this month, alyssa'll be heading back to the states to kick start her photo work. i'll be heading out on my own to go through bolivia and then onwards through chile and argentina to patagonia. the tentative plan is to fly out of buenos aires in mid-july.

i haven't bought my plane ticket yet, so the plan's still up in the air. so if any of y'all have some frequent flier miles gathering dust...

-k

oh, and as a post script, a tip of the hat goes out to my buddy andrew moseman who was just accepted to the MIT graduate program for science writing. i didn't think it was possible for his ego to get any bigger, but i'm excited to watch it happen. cheers moseman.

i didn't move to the city, the city moved to me

2007-04-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

i have wielded machete and ho. i have hauled hundreds of pounds of water and earth. i helped build a little dam out of rocks. i am officially tough as nails.

well, as tough as a few weeks of chores on a farm can make ya, anyways.

alyssa and i have finished our stint on the rio muchacho organic farm in ecuador and just this morning added peru to our visa collection. we´re on our way south this week passing through the cities of Piuru, Lima and eventually to Cuzco in the south of peru. as you know peru is not a small country and bussing across its length in a week is a helluva task. why would we bring such a hellish bus trip upon ourselves in such a short amount of time.

two (three) words - machu freakin´ pichu.

alyssa has a plane ticket out of lima on the 19th so we´re gonna spend the rest of her time here hiking up to the lost city of the inca empire. along with this really cool english girl we met on the farm we´re gonna do the 3-4 day hike up through the cloud forests to one of the seven wonders of the world.

we´re excited as hell, lemme tell you. now that we´re out of rural ecuador i´ll be making an effort to keep this space updated a little more often. i still love and miss ya all to death.

stay cool up there in northern hemisphere land.

kris

i'm gonna tuck my worries underneath my arm and scat right back to my pappy's farm

2007-03-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

hello out there in tv land.

alyssa and i's journey has officially gone intercontinental! on what has somehow managed to be the most hassle free leg of our journey we are officially in ecuador. my compatriot and i'll be spending the next month doing some volunteer work at an organic farm along the coast. it promises to be both educational and fun - kinda like reading rainbow but with less lavar burton and more machetes and fresh tomatos.

as we'll be off in the wilds of ecuador neither of us is gonna be around el interweb much for the next couple weeks. but rest assured we're doing fine and well this side of the andes and we'll check in soon.

oh, and some internet love goes out to my cousin katie who's getting married this week. my family's gonna road trip down to alabama in my great aunt's lincoln continental.

my parent's are officially awesome.

screw mr webster, it's just plain wrong

2007-03-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

Main Entry: lit·er·al·ly Pronunciation: \ˈli-tə-rə-lē, ˈli-trə-lē, ˈli-tər-lē\
Function: adverb
Date: 1533
1 : in a literal sense or manner : actually
2 : in effect : virtually
usage Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

ok, so mr merriam and mr webster admit that the word is often used ironically to add emphasis. sure. but that doesn't change the fact that the word literally does not mean figuratively.

long ride all the way to argentina, so far from home

2007-03-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

i haven't completely lost my mind, i swear.

well, i suppose that's a relative statement, idn't it? alyssa and i are currently back in the mountains after a few days of much needed rest and relaxation along the beaches of the pacific coast. this sojournin' can be exhausting, don'tcha know. next up we're off to Colon to do some gawking at the panama canal.

it's an engineering marvel, i'm told.

then we head to panama city and hop a jet plane bound for south america. updates to follow.

-k

p.s. how's the weather?

now, tell me that aint insecurrr. the concept of skool seem so securrr

2007-02-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

i'd hoped to keep this blog relatively introspective-free. too often i think online blogs can be obnoxiously self-indulgent. well, today it's my turn. i promise, my few but faithful readers, subsequent posts'll be more upbeat.

i've spent the last few hours tackling the emmense project of educating myself about nursing education. it seems the more i find out the more i have to learn. it also seems the more i learn the harder this new major seems like it's gonna be. i'm stubborn and proud enough to want to go to the best school there is (U of W-Madison) but the more i look into it the more i think that might not be an option. it's a really good school and, consequently, a really hard school to get into.

there's another school in madison called edgewood that might be suited for me. though i can't find anything that says so, i suspect there's a waiting list for it. and even if there isn't there's residency issues to think about. in order to even think about applying to either i should probably wait a year and establish residency (the money savings are huge). then i have at least 9 - 12 credits of anatomy, physiology, and/or microbiology to deal with before i can even apply. even assuming i get awesome grades in those, my GPA and ACT scores may only barely put me at the bottom of the entering class.

all that aside, even if everything goes perfectly, by the time i finish establishing residency, finishing pre-reqs, graduating with the BS in nursing, doing residency-type work, then going back for my master's in science as a nurse practitioner something like six or seven years have passed. so here i am, in the beautiful highlands of panama stressed out about school. trips like this are supposed to give you perspective, and perspective is good, no doubt. but i've had more than my share of late.

phew. that feels better.

tomorrow alyssa and i are going to check out some hot springs a few kilometers away. then on monday we're going on a tour of a coffee farm led by this really cool dutchman named hans. (interesting side note: panamanians use the u.s.'s so-called standard system for weights and measures, but not for distances).

humble as a mumble in the jungle

2007-02-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

alyssa and i just spent the last couple days visiting andrea martinsen out in her peace corps site. the journey was almost as cool as the destination. we took a bus to this seedy little port town called chriqui grande. imagine white clay on stilts and instead of south dakota you´ve got the carribbean sea. from there we took this rickety boat taxi across the bay and up a river delta about 2 hours up. we couldn´t take the boat all the way up to andrea´s village for the river hadn´t seen enough rain. so we had to jump ship a village early. this left us walking. it wouldn´t have been a problem if it hadn´t started raining. for an hour alyssa and i trudged through knee-deep mud in a torrential, tropical down pour.

we are hard core.

the pay off was a few days in a sleepy indigenous village along a quiet river in the middle of the jungles of panama.

things are still going fine. i´ve been thinking about home a lot lately. figure that´s why you go on a trip like this. also been thinking about moving to wisconsin. and utah, among other places. settling down is sounding tempting after this last year of vagabonding.

of course, as soon as i settle down i know i´ll miss it. life can be obnoxious, but at least it isn´t boring.

the bird keeps her distance, and I keep my spleen

2007-02-17T08:25:00.000-08:00

obligatory tropical bird picture. saw these two very tame birds outside the gate of the copan ruins in northern honduras.

went to the beach but I couldn't find the path

2007-02-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

dateline - quepos, costa rica.

alyssa and i are alive and well. i know the lack of interweb presence may have left some of you in doubt, but rest assured we be a'ight.

after some whirlwind days in antigua, guatemala punctuated by a hike up an active volcano and a late night of libations with some cute irish girls and a brit named andy we headed to honduras. we did the mayan ruin thing, which is as cool as ruins can be, then hauled butt across honduras and nicaragua coming to a well deserved stop at playa hermosa. it was beautiful - a surfer's haven with a black sand beach and plenty of hammocks to be lounged in.

alyssa and i are currently in quepos, costa rica to do some sight seeing, then it's off to panama for carnivale, more beachin' and swimmin', then we're heading off to ecuador in mid-march.

we'll try to keep the updates coming, but with the spotty interweb access we can make no guarantees.

in a boat that’d been his father’s In the morning

2007-01-30T07:22:00.000-08:00

we´ve jumped the border. alyssa and i made our way from san cristobol, mexico to panajachel, guatemala a few days ago. it´s a tiny town nestled in the mountains of the guatemalan highlands. the main feature, an enormous mountain lake surrounded by active volcanoes.

we´re gonna hang out here for a couple days and maybe wander up to antigua for some night life action. so far we´ve been eating brunch and reading literature all day, then going to bed around 9ish.

i used to be cool. i don´t know what happened.

all dust and stone and moribund

2007-01-30T07:09:00.000-08:00

starting in mexico city, alyssa and i have made it a point to pop in just about every catholic church we´ve found. i´m not catholic but i´m still in awe of these things. it´s been cool seeing how different areas of central america design their churches. in mexico city the intricacy of the largest church was incredible, and even in the smaller town of oaxaca (where i took this pic) it´s pretty impressive.

ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low

2007-01-23T17:48:00.000-08:00

alyssa and i climbed a mountain today. one of the higher points in mexico, and we ascended it.

basically, we rule, and the mountain doesn't. go us!

2007-01-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

regular readers of this blog may have noticed that it's been on a touch of a hiatus over the last few weeks. ok, admitted, last few months. some of you may be wondering, "what has kris been up to of late?" the answer: i'm getting ready!

as i mentioned back in october, my good friend alyssa and i were planning a january trip to mexico - well, we're doing it. in fact, we're hopping a plane to mexico city in no less than seven hours. neither of us knows what to expect - in fact we don't know where we're going to be sleeping in 3 days (we do have hostel arrangements for tonight and tomorrow). i've been talking about going back to south america since i came back from brazil in 2002 and now it's actually happening.

in the next few weeks and months there will be many stories to tell, much pontificating and self-reflection to be had, and maybe even a picture or two. but i'll save my cogitatin' and ruminatin' for a day when i'm in warmer climes. so to all of you suffering through ice storms, decimated orange crops and a president with a thirty-four percent approval rating:

"i'm out!"

you have to get up get out and get living

2006-10-30T06:37:00.000-08:00

i figured since this is a photo blog, i should probably get around to actually posting some pictures. these are from my trip to salt lake city last weekend. salt lake is probably one of the coolest cities i've ever been to. i mean that without the slightest twinge of irony. seriously. salt lake? freakin' awesome!

the life i love is makin' music with my friends

2006-10-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

my world has been completely turned upside down. example:

right now i'm staying at the apartment of my old friends and former roommates scott and nancy. it's an awesome place along g street in lincoln's downtown neighborhood. their place has an enormous balcony that overlooks the governor's mansion and a beautiful view of the tallest state capitol in the union. right now, nebraska is going through it's typical fall routine. from what i'm told it was about ninety degrees fahrenheit not a week ago, now the mercury's struggling to peak at 45 degrees. i'm home.

i was going to get a haircut as i haven't had one since weeks before leaving for niger. i was excited. this was the first step in the long process of redefining 'me' after my abrupt stint in the peace corps - a hair cut. you can all relate i'm sure. anyway, i walked down the stair well of their subdivided victorian, jiggled the front door open and stepped out into the first chilly weather i'd seen or felt for months. i love this time of year. i'm a total sucker for the crackle of leaves, the sound of a football game from blocks away - all that sentimental crap. i stepped out of their apartment, took a deep breath, exhaled and was taken aback. steam. it's cold. i'm in lincoln. i need a sweatshirt. i'm not in africa anymore.

this has been the strangest couple weeks of my life. little more than a week ago i was in sub-saharan africa heading into niger's cold season - meaning lows around seventy-five degrees at 5 a.m. now i'm here. it's been a lot to take in. so what does one do the week after they're plucked from west africa and set back in middle-america? well:

spend the night in my parent's place, eating leftovers, mexican food, and going for a two-hour bike ride.

roll back to lincoln for a night of sipping microbrews and catching up with old friends. fall asleep because of jet lag.

spend all the next day camped out on scott and nancy's couch watching college football. auburn gets theirs, texas dispels any speculation they won't beat nebraska and florida staves off a loss in the sec. go to yia yia's with nancy for pizza. rumors spread around town that i'm back. few believe it. later that evening go over to kim and jared's for the nebraska game. jet lag puts me to sleep from kick off to the final seconds.

spend sunday helping angela move out of her parent's house. i'm good for carrying headboards, box springs and kitchen tables apparently.

dinner at the blue orchid with angela. matt bought us a killer bottle of wine. i ate curried salmon and cognac beef. it was decadent and delectable. went out to doc's with the crew from the restaurant. i realized how much i genuinely enjoyed working there. dangerous thoughts to be sure. went to matt's place for a night cap. he lives in my old apartment with my old balcony view of 13th street. even has my old bedroom. it was weird.

tuesday spent bumming around scott and nancy's place. i get in touch with beth and brett who i'm super excited to talk to. they want me to go out to salt lake city and live in the apartment that just opened up beneath theirs. i decide that'd be a damn good idea ...

then, yesterday, alyssa calls. she's just returned from kicking ass and taking names at the eddie adams photo-j workshop in new york state. she's fired up. really fired up. she's decided that after she finishes up an internship she'll take her camera to mexico city, then down south through central america, then into south america.

she wants me to come with her. i said yes.

so, and i never thought i'd say this, i'm moving back to lincoln. the plan, as of yesterday, is to find a room/basement/living room couch to crash on for the next few months while working at the blue orchid. in mid-january, alyssa and i'll take our backpacks and cameras south-of-the-border/south-of-the-equator until we run out of money, maybe sometime in march or april.

we're nuts. we're irresponsible. we're running away from our responsibilities as college educated white people to delve right into the work force and contribute to the world economy. we also don't care. never again in our lives are we going to have the chance to do this, so we're going for it.

i spent yesterday afternoon at the restaurant scribbling my life's options on the table. i came up with six. three of them serious, only one makes sense. i'm goin' vagabonding!

and a rock feels no pain

2006-10-02T04:35:00.000-07:00

well, i've got some good news, some great news, some bad news that isn't so bad and some news that's just kinda bad. not a very auspicious beginning to a blog post, i know. but have no fear, mom, all is well.

the good news first: the bbq i mentioned in my last post was a blast. there was an enormous bbq pit filled to the brim with shishkebob, rack of lamb, hot dogs, sausage and a few cuts of meat i didn't recognize. nearly the entire country of volunteers was there and even a hand few from peace corps benin (a country to the south). the libations were free flowing, the dancing was intense and spirits were high. it was an awesome chance to revel and celebrate american style and get to know the hundred or so other crazies we new-kids'll be living and working with during our time here in west africa. it was a heckuva good time.

at a swearing-in ceremony at the residence of the united states ambassador to the west african nation of niger, i, kristopher allen kolden, was officially sworn in as a peace corps volunteer. the ceremony was quick and painless punctuated by a few big wig speeches, a swearing in oath in both english and french (the french oath is far better than the mccarthyistic state department variety, i must say). afterwards we were whisked away back to the training site for one of the more extravagant dinners i've had in some time. i mean this thing put southern baptist pot lucks to shame. there was cheese, chicken, lamb, fruit salad, more cheese, fried spring rolls, coke, fanta, fried rice, and cheese. normally after swear-in there'd have been a huge party, but our revelries from the nights before left most of us too tired to do much else but sit around and talk. sounds lame, but it was a great chance for us stagiers to chill out and let it all soak in. we're volunteers, officially, and that's pretty cool.

an addendum to the great news: my blue bubu turned out awesome, and i'll be darned if isn't the most comfortable thing i've ever worn. haute couteur in niger isn't so bad after all and i don't mind saying i looked damn good in it, too. pictures to be posted shortly, if my faithful readers think they can handle it, that is.

the bad news that isn't so bad: saturday was our last full day at the training site. it was a day of lots of goodbyes to our families and friends in our host village before we head off to our regions to be formally installed and made ready to spend our first, and longest month, living in our villages. the first month is the toughest because everything is new, we hapless volunteers have a very slight grip on the national language and frankly moving somewhere new is scary. it's a challenge but also an adventure for everyone setting off to start this next chunk of their lives.

unfortunately that isn't the bad news.

the bad news is that i won't be joining my fellow compatriots out to our first harrowing weeks in the villages. for reasons i won't get into in a public forum, i was medically evacuated to washington dc on tuesday and am now back in nebraska shackin' up with my parents.

big news, i know. feel free to take a pause and grab a cup of coffee and a bagel, then continue.

have no fear. this isn't anything like malaria or that brain eating worm from star trek: the wrath of khan. as i've said before the peace corps' dedication to the health and safety of its volunteers is second to none. in my case they are just being extra careful. i won't get into the details since it's medical hullabaloo and not the sort of stuff you just wanna throw out there on the 'ol interweb. but rest assured i'm healthy, safe and content. the tough part is i won't be going back to africa anytime soon. congress allows the peace corps 45 days of medical evacuation for volunteers. in my case the providers say it's gonna take longer than that. so i've been medically seperated for the time being. this doesn't mean i won't be going back, just that if i do make it back it won't be anytime soon.

in a word: bummer.

so what now? well that's the big question, idn't it? in the immediate couple days i'm gonna hang out in the 'ol 402 and revel in early fall (my favorite season). tomorrow i'm gonna eat a burrito and watch live college football while wearing a hooded sweatshirt! for anyone who's spent time away from the states and then gone back, you know that that prospect is much more exciting than it sounds.

i wish the situation was different. i sincerely wish i was sweltering in 105º heat and munching a diet of rice and sauce while working with some of the most amazing people i've ever met - nigerien and american alike. but things are as they are and if there's anything i'm good at it's handling change. so i'm gonna take advantage of what i've got. i'm gonna see some very old friends - some who i haven't seen since last year. later i might hit the road to see all the cool people i know in portland, slc, madison and palm beach, among other places. i'm just gonna do all the stuff someone reshaping their future normally does. and no, i'm not gonna go backpacking across europe to 'find myself' because that's trite and totally lame ... everyone knows the train's the way to go.

thankfully (and this was an intense cause for worry) i won't have to change the name of my blog, as the current one seems to fit just fine. i don't see any reason to take this bad boy down. my life's still an adventure, it's just changed locale for the moment. so please come back for (ir)regular updates.

oh, and if y'all could e-mail me current phone numbers and such i'd appreciate it. not thinking i'd be anywhere near a phone for the next two years i've lost most of them. i wanna get in touch with a lot of you so drop your digits and/or addresses by my email at kris_kolden at yahoo.com. email me with any questions, concerns, thoughts, etcetera and i promise to get back asap.

again, this is not as big and nasty as it sounds. i'm in good health, good spirits and good company.

love ya all and i'll be in touch super soon.

this is the first day of my life

2006-09-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

so sorry about the snafu with the recent blog post. who knew that internet connections in the sahel would be unreliable?

i'm gonna keep this blog post short. not because i don't have anything to say but because there's way too much of it to lay down. tomorrow is the swearing-in ceremony for the newest stage in peace corps niger (that's me). it's a big deal. four to five hundred people show up including nearly all of the hundred and twenty volunteers currently in country. it's a mess. it's overwhelming. it's exciting. it's, well, you get the idea.

last night was the start of the festivities surrounding swear-in week. the american embassy has a large rec center and the peace corps rented it out for the bi-annual 'gender and development' auction - an internal fundraising event to raise money for peace corps projects having to deal with, you guessed it, gender and development. it's a huge event with most of the volunteers coming in for silent and live auctions. it's a big party but it raises a lot of money.

normally the day between the gad auction and swear-in (which is tomorrow) wouldn't be a big thing. this year's different. with this year being rammadan concessions have had to be made. it's a 99% muslim country after all. normally the official ceremony with all the national big wigs and oath taking and such would be followed by a huge dinner and massive party with every volunteer in country. since it would be slightly inappropriate to drink beer and eat pork in front of people observing one of the pillars of islam we're ... havin' a bar-be-que! the current volunteers pooled money, bought a ton of meat including beef, chicken and (rumored) camel and are throwing us newbies a party at the peace corps hostel in niamey.

then tomorrow is the actual ceremony. we'll take the oath any state department employee takes, hop on a bus back to the training site and enjoy the last day our stage will have to be all together. it's exciting.

so that's what i've been up to. y'know. nothing too major.

there is a road that meets the road that leads to my house

2006-09-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

[editor's note]
this post was originally supposed to appear last friday but the information super highway opted to bite me in the butt. much apologies for leavin' y'all hanging

you'll have to forgive me for the superficiality of this post. but what're you supposed to say when the life you've known for 23 years is flipped utterly topsy turvy, thrown into an off balance washing machine and set to spin?

last week i spent my first nights in the village i will be calling home for the next two years. i got back into niamey on tuesday, and have even had interweb access since then, but haven't known where to start. here it is, friday, and i still don't know where to start.

but start i will with some fun details:

1. my village is among the most beautiful places i have ever been. it's five k off the main road. yep. five k. that means that the ways to get to my village are: ox cart, donkey cart, bush taxi, or, my favorite, foot. it's a beautiful walk through bright white sand over small, rolling hills. right know the millet (a grain that kinda grows like corn) is super tall which makes everything very green and as you walk along you can see the dry river bed and mesas off in the distance. my village is situated on similar hills and is picture perfect. i have trees too. tons of them. all decades old, too, which means a lot of shade (a premium here in niger).

2. my house is just as perfect as my village. my concession, a word used here to mean house/compound.yard/basically whatever you call home, is a good size, not too big, not too small. my latrine (read, private hole in the ground) is spacious and has really tall walls (another luxury). i have an enormous tree that shades the majority of my yard for the entire day. again, another bush premium.

3. my closest neighbor kelly is great. my neighbor in the market town is also very cool. he has an electric fan. in a word: glorious.

4. my team mates in konni are great. it's a smaller team which is going to be a perfect fit for me. they're very driven volunteers but also know how to have fun and laugh at some of the absurdities that come with life here. one volunteer even went to k-state and studied photojournalism. the other night she and i hung out after dinner and geeked out on phototalk for a while. life is sweet.

5. pre-service training is almost over. this is huge. after spending two months atop a hill with the same people for most of the day, you start to fiend for a little me-time. this isn't to say it hasn't been great. i said at the start of this whole shebang how excited i was to meet the crazy folk who'd be willing to give themselves over for two years. i've made some great friends out here and i'm gonna miss seeing them, but it's time to have my village with my house and my villagers. it's that whole american individualism thing.

like i said, sorry if this post is so superficial. suffice it to say this has been one of the most exciting weeks of my life filled with a million and half new experiences.

man alive i wish this post wasn't so over the top, but hey, i'm still in the idealistic-everything's new-holy crap-my life rules-stage. dispatches to follow. much love to those of you homeside. i'll hollah at you in a couple days if i can hopefully.

p.s. i'll officially be a peace corps volunteer in just under a week.

where the hell ya goin at a thousand feet per second

2006-09-12T04:39:00.000-07:00

at 3 a.m. tomorrow morning i'll be hopping a charter bus to konni. i've spent the last few weeks in a very temporary home and now it's time to move on to a slightly less temporary home. i'm excited. really excited. i've been excited about this whole peace corps thing for years and now it's finally here.

this week'll be a series of firsts. my first bus trip from niamey to konni. my first party with my new team mates. my first bush taxi ride from konni to my market town. my first hour-long trek from the road to my village. my first round of greetings with my new neighbors. my first night under the stars in my home. my first night alone surrounded by no one who speaks my native language. it's scary. awesomelly scary. scarily awesome? something like that.

it's not like i don't have any experience bouncin' around. you grow up in the air force you get used to pulling up roots. once, when i was working on a family tree project in middle school, my mom and i counted thirteen houses we'd received mail at. this was when i was twelve. i've never really known the idea of home the way most people do. sure, i spent a lot of time in nebraska but it was still never home. there was always something on the horizon that kept it from being too permanent. and now here i am in west africa about to move into a mud hut. in some strange way it all seems to make sense.

reminds of the story about my last night in nebraska. my folks and i went out to dinner at a steak house in lincoln. towards the end of dinner when we were all full up on red meat and vanilla porter my mom asked me a strange question.

'is it weird that i'm not freaked out about you moving to africa?'

'no mom,' i said, 'in fact it's awesome. you have no idea how easy this is knowing you're cool with it.

then she said perhaps the coolest thing any mom could say to her son on the eve of him galavanting off to the developing world for two years. 'maybe i should be freaked out, but, y'know, this really just seems like a logical step for you. it's just not that strange.'

my mom rocks.

so that's what's been on my mind the last couple days. that and i'm thinking about buying a camel. updates on the dromedary to follow.

also. getting letters and packages is six kinds of awesome when you're on the other side of the planet, so if you feel so inclined send any and all love (or freezedried fruit and velveeta) to my new address at:

Kris Kolden, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 89
Konni, Niger
West Africa

with much love to all my homies in the land of milk and honey with special congrats to Jillian on her nuptials, Alyssa on getting out of Nebraska, my brother on his first apartment, my sister on her flying skills, Andrew on drinking beer in Wisconsin (and helping people while he's at it). also mad props to everyone else keepin' it real.

i'll have a post for y'all in a couple days. 'til then, stay cool.

i was on the highway.

2006-09-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

| know something!

After a month and a half of being in the peace corps purgatory of preservice preparation i've got my site announcement! I know where I'll be spending the next two years of my life and good lord, lemme tell you, it feels awesome. friday was a mighty long day. we had language class in the morning, which is becoming ever tedious, and then spent the rest of the day sitting around waiting for the powers that be to decide our fate.

the peeps in charge of the 6 or so regions here in niger all got together in front of the waiting horde of trainees. ive never seen a more anxious group of people in my life. hell, ill admit, i was a wreck. you gotta understand, weve been living in someone elses household and training with the same group of people all day every day. dammit, were ready to go! to get our announcements this guy mike would play a snippit of song on his ipod and we had to play name that tune. a handful of songs went by: a little macy gray, some gNr, led zeppelin. i knew most of 'em but it took the super funk of james brown's 'get on up' for me to snag my announcement. i couldn't have asked for a more fitting tune.

so details details details.

everyone grab your google maps cuz here we go. im being posted in the Konni region about an hour and a half east of the city of Konni. the most exciting thing about the whole situation is that ill be opening a new village. the peace corps typically does three rounds of volunteers per village so a lot of times new volunteers are placed where someone has already been. a lot of times this means that the village will expect you to be just like the volunteer before you. i get to start completely fresh with no preconceptions. it's awesome.

my village has about 4000 people in it, mostly of Hausa speakers (the language im learning). i'm gonna be off the beaten path a fair amount, at least an hour's walk away from the nearest gravel road. but hey, i didn't join the peace corps to be coddled, right. from what i'm told the village is reall cool with a lot of large, old trees. it sounds super photogenic. my nearest neighbor is a girl from my training class. she's super cool, totally laid back, everything you'd want in a neighbor.

my regional team seems really cool. it's a team of about 20, so it's not too big. everyone i've met seems very relaxed and friendly. i'm told that the team is very tight knit and that they all work really well together which is great for group projects and such. when all's said and done i couldn't possibly be more excited. i've also heard rumors that there is a missionary family from nebraska near where i'm posted. i've also heard rumors that the family has high speed internet access. even more rumored is the family's affinity for nebraska football. needless to say i'm stoked.

so yeah, nothing too deep or introspective this time around. i'll be going out to my village later this week to kinda introduce myself and hang out for a couple days. i'll get a chance to meet the head honchos in the village as well as spend some time in Konni getting to know my team mates. After that it's two weeks of training and then the official swear-in ceremony at the US ambassador's house. pretty exciting stuff.

even more exciting than that? before coming to this here interweb cafe i was custom fitted for my bou bou. yep. a bou bou. it's royal blue and freakin' awesome.

i pretty much have the sweetest life ever.

i love you all and i'll be in touch when i get back from my site visit.

like a runningback; get it man i'm straight off the block

2006-09-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

yesterday morning nearly 80 thousand people from across nebraska and the midwest converged on the sleepier of the two big cities in nebraska to worship at the field built by Bob, Tom, Tommy, Brook, Ahman and countless other household names, in nebrska at least. Memorial stadium was packed full of optimistic fans spurred on by last season's definitive wins against Colorado and michigan. is this the year that'll put nebraska back into prominence? is a preseason ranking of 20 under or over rating the 'skers? what about that USC game in a few weeks? will they be able to take care of business and win the Big 12 North? God I hope so!

For those of you who don't geek out on football i apologize, because thats all we here in niger have had on our minds the last two or three days. it's hard to describe exactly how it did; but even in the middle of the heat and mud walls here in niger yesterday felt like game day. the other volunteers and i woke up and it was all we could talk about. we went on a trip to tour some local and regional hospitals for our tech training but rather than listen to some bureaucrat blither on health infrastructure we were fixated on notre dame's highly touted QB, USCs rebuilding year and, of course, NU's prospect to be one of the top Ds in the country. it was a blast. an absolute and complete blast.

we counted back the hours trying to figure out exactly when the kickoffs were and talked about where our friends would be pregaming. one of the other volunteer's got a text message from, her dad at 1 this morning. it was short and simple: "14 to 10. Go Irish."

So the point of all this ruminating about a low ranked football team beating a lackluster football team? I dunno. It's something to get excited about. It's something that we recent college grads can bond around. it's fun, and it's american. After 5 or - weeks feeling drowned in a completely different culture i feel like i've finally come up for air. In the second day of our pre-departure orientqtion seminar thingamajig they talked about the importance of holding onto your americanism. at the time it sounded silly. im going to niger to get away from all this american crap. now i see what they mean.

Im definitely here in Niger to appreciate what life is like without all the american stuff. but im surpsied to find im going to grow to love america all the more being away from it.

Anyway, its been a good week here in Niger. we went on a bit of a field trip this weekend and i got to walk around with a wild giraffe herd (pics to follow asap). on friday im getting my site placement so ill know which village i'll be placed in for the rest of my service. needless to say its a pretty big deal. and im super super stoked.

My time at the 'ol interweb cafe is running short but i want to say an enormous congratulations to one of my absolute best and oldest friends Jillian on her upcoming wedding. I would give three lots of camels and a goat to be there with you. I love you to death, kid, and ill see you when i get back.

hollah!

when i goosestep...

2006-08-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

i was sitting with my friend mark the other night just keepin' cool late in the evening drinking tea and having a good 'ol fashioned sing a long. we were teaching some of the neighborhood kids some americana tunes like "this little light of mine" and "you are my sunshine." there's something really endearing about hearing a west african 12-year-old mumble, "i'ma leddit shahn," in response. it was a pretty cool night as west africa goes, a storm was about to roll in and turn the normally dusty streets into rivers of mud, water and refuse. but then it was windy and refreshing. we'd been watching some of the other kids playing hand clap games and got to talking about some of the games we'd played when we were kids: red rover, ring around the rosie and duck duck goose. we were having a blast reminiscing.

"wanna teach 'em how to play duck duck goose?" mark asked me after a pregnant pause.

"yeah. yeah i do."

we gathered the 5 or 6 of them up, we sat cross legged in a circle and mark translated the rules into french. somewhere along the way the translation got muddled into "goose goose duck." it didn't seem to matter. mark and i played goose goose duck with the neighborhood kids in the dust of the street. we would sit, crouched over our feet until we got ducked and then spring up and tear around the circle, falling over our big kid legs and generally having a blast.

a half hour later, covered in dust, sweat and whatever else was in the street that day i brushed the dirt off my pants and sat down. it was the most fun i've had since i've been in the country and it was right then that i knew what I'd suspected through bouts of homesickness and gi issues: peace corps niger is freakin' sweet.

my time is running short here at the cyber cafe in the capital city of niamey so I hope that little vignette of life here can stave off the worryings of my mom, dad and all you other faithful readers. the letters i've gotten have really been cool. keep 'em coming. even if you don't have anything to say it's still fun to have news from the other side of the world.

apologies for not being able to update this here blog as much as i'd like. the peace corps has made a point of limiting our contact with the states in an effort to fight homesickness. it's obnoxious but necessary i suppose. i'll be able to come into the capitol city once a week so expect updates when i do. but i make no guarantees. if there's one thing i've learned and learned quickly it's that you can't expect anything in Niger to happen according to plan. just gotta go with the flow as it were.

for those of you in the mood to send stuff to a kid cut off from all those american goodies, here's a wish list:

-Music CDs. i gotta keep my hipster cred up, y'know. mix cds are sweet, but any mp3 cd'd be sweet. the more the merrier.
-dried fruit
-candy
-coffee (anything better than nescafe would be welcome!)
-pictures of stuff goin' on back home
-non sequiturs (i love a good laugh, y'know)
-anything else you can fathom

i gotta cut this post short. much love from here in NIger and i'll be in touch as soon as i can.

kris

is it different where you are, a xanadu or shang ri la

2006-08-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

i'm alive!

yes, believe it or not this scrawny, white bred kid from the middle of the country has managed to survive more than two weeks in the poorest, hottest country in the world. high five. needless to say it has been a sincerely mind-blowing experience over the last few weeks and no blog post, I fear, could sum it all up in a few concise paragraphs. i'm gonna do my best to paint a picture of what life is like here but suffice it to say i'll only be shaving the tip of the ice berg.

we landed in niamey, niger's capitol city, after a long flight from jfk international east to charles de gaul in paris and finally south to niamey. the air france stewardesses were bitter, cold and rude as would be expected but it's hard to be annoyed since they're so darn cute. the trip was full of most of the obnoxiousness of long flights: cramped seating, lackluster food and a big dude who farts a lot, but it could have been worse. we did get to watch v for vendetta which was six kinds of cool. we were driven from the airport to the peace corps training site in a village a half-hour away. the training compound is really pretty nice by nigeriens standards: electricity by generator, indoor plumbing in the latrines and showers, security lights and a large chain link fence protected by barbed wire and a few guards. in my more cynical moods it conjures up images of a "gitmo" for liberal, college educated hippies. the training compound is where myself and the 41 other volunteers in training will be spending the next two months in language training, cultural sensitivity education, safety and security issues and medical info training. it's a lot like an adult summer camp in some respects. it's just that instead of making dream catchers with popsicle sticks and colored yarn we're learning how to avoid cerebral malaria. fun stuff

After a few days of jetlagged hell spent staying up at the peace corps training compound in a town just outside Niamey they moved us down into the village paired up with host country national host families. it's there that life started to get interesting. in the host families we've really become aware of just what we 42 volunteers have gotten ourselves into. life in niger is different. very different. duh. it's a third world country in western africa. we're paired up with another volunteer and our host family where we'll stay for the majority of our training. david and I arrived in our compound the first day and actually felt very at home. our host brother is super chill and is all about helping us learn hausa, the local language. the living arrangements are primitive but more than doable. within our family's compound the peace corps has built a mud hut with a thatched roof. attached is a sort of yard surrounded by a mud wall that houses our beds. the heat in niger pretty much requires us to sleep outside with a mosquito net except when it rains. this is fine by me as the the starscape out here is unlike any i've ever seen. truly incredible.

the food is often times like i expected, rice and vegetable sauce. it's not the most appetizing stuff in the world, but it's filling. we've eaten pretty well over the last few weeks since the villagers have been rolling out the red carpet for the anasaras (white people). In the last few days we've been treated to egg salad and mutton, a helluva treat. the custom here is to eat communally around a large plate ... using your hands. it's like being in preschool again. thankfully it's also a custom for people sharing a plate to wash their hands in front of one another.

as for bathing, also not a big deal. with no running water we bathe with a bucket, a cup and a bar of soap. it's a refreshing way to start the day, but i've taken to taking mine in the afternoons after the water's warmed up in the sun. standards of cleanliness, though, have been quickly going out the window. deodorant is already a thing of the past and i've taken to avoiding underwear when possible. the logic of this was explained to me by another volunteer. "Underwear is only making a part of your body that's inherently hot and sweaty even more hot and sweaty." the man has a point. and that's probably more information than y'all wanted to know.

like i said, it's impossible to sum up everything that has gone on the last few weeks in the half-hour or so i have to write this. hopefully my pictures, which are coming soon, will be able to paint a better picture. just know that i'm doing fine and having a blast. i won't say i'm not homesick for you all, because i am. but the people of the peace corps training staff and the nigeriens nationwide have been nothing but open and generous since the second we stepped off the plane. i'm asking myself daily if i'm cut out for this whole shebang and then i look around our training classes and realize there are 41 other people asking themselves the same question. i can take solace in that. i hope to be in touch in another two weeks or so when i have the chance to get into niamey and use an internet cafe but until then, please, write me letters and/or send care packages. any little piece of home helps. i love you all and i'll see you when i get back.

holla.

there are two colours in my head

2006-07-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

This is it. I'm movin' to Africa. The last couple days have been some of the most surreal of my life. The last night in town was great and I was lucky enough to spend it drinking my favorite beer, on my favorite spot (the porch/veranda/balcony at 13th & D) with my favorite people. I couldn't have asked for a better send off. Thanks Brett, Andrew and Beth.

After no sleep I showed up in Philadelphia took a shower and my Peace Corps career began. The training sessions have been intensely introspective with a lot of discussion about anxieties and aspirations. It sounds hokey and awfully touchy feely, I know, but when you're 1 day into the next two years of a completely different life I think you're allowed to be. The 43 people in my Peace Corps "class" are incredibly smart, diverse, outgoing, outrageous and fun. They've blown my expectations out of the water. It's been cool getting to know them through the training seminar stuff as well as over a fantastic night of dinner and drinks conveniently subsidized by the U.S. government. Thanks for paying your taxes.

As cool as it is to be leaving for a third world country, the harsh reality is I won't even have the meager access to phones or the internet that I had half-expected. I was assured by the Peace Corps peeps that I will have access to the internet or even a phone for at least several weeks. Rest assured, everyone, I'm going to be OK. There's always the mail and I'mna definitely need to be getting letters from home saying that the world isn't going to end and letting me know our empire hasn't crumbled. I still need to go to grad school after all.

My postal address in Niger for the next few months will be:

Kris Kolden, PCT
B.P. 10537
Niamey, Niger
West Africa

Let it be known I love you all and I will post again as soon as I can to let you all know I'm alright. This easily the coolest, most exciting thing I've ever done and I couldn't be happier about it.

I love ya all.

these days I seem to think a lot about the things that i forgot to do.

2006-07-24T12:45:00.001-07:00

photo by alyssa schukar
I was lucky enough to spend my last Sunday afternoon stateside doing it up the American way. A handful of some very good friends from college and I posted up at alyssa’s parent's house, drank beer, swam for hours, ate shish-ke-bob and told dirty jokes while listening to a quality iPod playlist. It was fantastic.

I couldn’t help but think how decadent a typical American summer day can be. We were kings and queens for an afternoon basking in hundreds of gallons of clean, filtered water; eating fresh chicken, onions, avocados, pineapple and corn off the grill; drinking micro-brewed beers handcrafted for our pleasure while listening to music on a stereo worth more than a month's-worth of food in many places of the world. Preparing to move to the third-world puts a lot of things into perspective, I suppose.

I leave for Philadelphia tomorrow morning. It’s both exciting and scary. I’ll see you all when I get back.

cigarette smoke doesn't hide as well as you think

2006-07-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

i don't like working in groups. seventh grade geography projects drove me nuts. one could say i don't play with others. but then there's my friend alyssa schukar. she and i have known each other since college (oh so long ago) and for whatever reason we've always worked really well together. everything we've collaborated on has been a total joint effort - greater than the sum of it's parts. i think it's pretty unique to find someone like that and it's why she is one of my favorite people.

we started out wanting to do a project together that would involve portraits of our friends. we brainstormed some pretty off the wall and downright garish ideas before we came up with an idea that made us laugh. the premise is headshots against 4 colored backdrops. everyone was asked to bring a prop that meant, said or had something (or nothing) to do with them. to tie it all together every picture features a cigarette. why? because cigarettes are cool, darn it.

it was super fun working with everyone on this project. the best part is this is only the start. as i meet new people over the course of my life i'll take more portraits. it'll continue to grow while i do. some of the people in these pictures i may never see again but i'll always remember them for the impact they had on my life.

so, as i'm heading off to parts unknown i want to say thanks to all of my friends for being a part of this project and a part of my life.

(i promise the posts in this blog won't always be this sappy)

i wanna go to Afrika

2006-07-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

i feel like i should have something incredibly insightful, poignant and downright deep for my first post here. i am moving to the poorest, hottest country in the world. i suppose i could blither on about how stoked i am to be stripping my life down to the bare essentials but i'm not much of a writer and i have a hard time taking myself seriously. so here's a self portrait that sums up what its like to be a week away from moving to the other side of the world. enjoy.