Ghana: day 1 and 2

I’m back in Ghana! Specifically, I’m going to be spending the next five weeks in Koforidua, which is the capital of Eastern Region. I’m working with Isaac Bruce, a student at Ashesi University, to research the agricultural inputs market in Ghana and develop a plan for how Burro (my dad’s company) can enter the market.

Since arriving on Sunday night, I’ve had a number of exciting and unique experiences, including, but not limited to:

1) A woman in the market grabbing my boob, squeezing it and nodding approvingly before telling me that I was “very beautiful”.

2) Having a mango, banana, orange and pineapple smoothie for breakfast, and having zero foodie-guilt, because all the fruits were produced well within 100 miles of our house.

3) Our neighbor’s chickens flying into our yard, which resulted in a chick falling into our sewer (it’s a concrete trench that goes around the house; the sinks and showers, but not toilets, drain directly into it). The chick was running around and squeaking in a panicked fashion, which caused its mother to run around the corner of our house, almost crash into me, chase me away and then cluck frantically trying to find its chick. Which it did not succeed in doing.

4) Our water almost running out. Dad has installed a 1500 liter tank at the house, which fills when the municipal water is running. Unfortunately, the water has not been running for the past few weeks, and our tank is down to about one day’s worth of water. We’re contemplating getting a water truck to come refill it, but in the meantime, we’ve set out two giant laundry tubs in the hopes that the rainy season will come through and give us enough to bathe with (and in the hopes that the chickens won’t use our water backup as a toilet). I’m beginning to understand the reasons people suggest that municipal systems in developing countries get privatized, because apparently this happens all the time.

5) Attempting to get information from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana. Isaac and I went to their regional office and found three men sitting at desks covered in stacks of papers, without computers. All three men were reading the newspaper. We were told that they could maybe fill out a questionnaire for us, but that they probably couldn’t give us any specific information. The guy we talked to also said that we should pay him a consultant fee, because we were trying to make money off of our research.

6) Seeing the motorcade for President John Atta-Mills, who was visiting Koforidua today. Dad got way more excited about this than any of the Ghanaians.

7) NOT GETTING SICK! I’ve had two restaurant meals and eaten a bunch of fruit from the market, and my stomach is as happy as it ever is when I’m home. So fingers crossed J

Observations from Greece

I’ve spent the past week and a half in Greece, mostly on the islands of Mykonos and Santorini. I’m off to Ghana tomorrow, and I don’t have any single insight from this trip that would warrant an entire post. So, in no specific order, here are some of the observations and thoughts I’ve had over the past week.

1. Seeing giant slabs of pork in the window of every café serving gyros (which is most of them), as well as a skinned lamb roasting on a spit, has reawakened some of my visceral revulsion at the idea of eating meat. That said, stuffed vine leaves filled with rice and ground beef are quite delicious (quasi-vegetarian exception #1—travel).

2. Europe always impresses me with the sheer number of languages that coexist within it. Case in point: in the main square of Santorini, there’s a shop that has issues of Cosmopolitan in English, French and German.

3. English is the lingua franca of the world. (My theory is that you learn your native language first, then the official language of your country (eg. if you’re Mayan and grow up speaking Quiche, you learn Spanish second), and then you learn English. If you’re American, this means you only need to learn one language to communicate with much of the world.) I’m torn, because I feel like I’m experiencing less authentic culture than if I spoke Greek. However, I know it’s unrealistic to learn every language in the world, or even of places I travel to, and given that, it’s nice to be able to ask for directions and order food in a restaurant.

4. Related to the last point, every time I go to Europe (I’ve been to France/Spain in 2003 and the UK in 2007), I always rekindle my desire to learn French, and more languages in general. Because my parents exposed me to French at such a young age, I can still understand basic conversations well, and I’m pretty sure I could pick it up fluently after a few months of living in a French speaking country. I also realized that my Spanish enables me to understand Italian tours well enough to grasp the main points of sentences. Conversely, I have an incredibly hard time understanding Spaniards because their accents are so completely different from Latin American Spanish. My language goals are, in order of priority: fluency in Spanish, conversationality in Twi (Ghana’s lingua franca, though English is the official language), and competency in French.

5. Every time I come home from school and interact with my parents, I go through a transition process. This is the process where the radical leftist/anarchist/ecoterrorist ideas I’ve been filled with at Whitman are filtered through my dad’s fervent belief that regulated markets are the best way to address most of the world’s problems, via a process of discussion and (mostly) debate. Based on my latest round of this transition, which has been a particularly harsh one, I’ve come up with an economic theory. I think capitalism might make more sense for Africa, and I think socialism/communism might make more sense for Latin America. I can’t back this theory up with any evidence, but thinking about my interactions with Ghanaians, Guatemalans, Mexicans and Costa Ricas, plus the readings I’ve done about history and politics, it makes sense in my head. I realize this is a gross generalization, and I’m going to think about it a lot more when I’m in Ghana and Ecuador. Stay tuned.

6. If you take a herd of donkeys and make them carry tourists up over a thousand feet of switchbacking stairs in direct sun all day, two things will happen. One: they will poop everywhere on the stairs, and the poop will not get cleaned up, and it will ferment in the sun and create fumes that are almost enough to induce fainting. And, more importantly: the donkeys will be extremely unhappy and, in some cases, unwell. And tourists will apparently not care, because they’re unique and part of Santorini’s historic culture (every shop on Santorini sells donkey-related paraphernalia). So the donkeys will continue to be exploited by capitalism (as will the people who own them, probably), and they will keep looking sad. And donkeys can look damn sad when they try, let me tell you.

7. There are stray dogs and cats all over Greece (or at least the places we went). Apparently, the strays in Athens are due to an animal welfare group exposing the conditions at a pound, where animals were being abused. The resulting scandal forced the mayor of the town to resign, and other towns took note and ordered shelters and pounds closed, because they were afraid of meeting the same fate. Consequently, there are roaming hordes of strays all over the city (and on Santorini and Mykonos).

8. I don’t like traveling to non-English speaking countries. I always feel like language barriers and cultural differences prevent me from connecting with locals in the short time I’m there, and without connections, I feel exploitative and obnoxious, especially when I speak English to locals. I love foreign countries, and I love learning and meeting people, but I’ve realized that to really do that, I probably just need to live abroad for a while. However, I might feel differently if I was doing a low-budget, youth hostel trip in the Spanish-speaking world, or going somewhere completely random where obnoxious Western tourists aren’t a huge problem.

9. Most produce in Greece is grown in Spain. I’m not sure how the food miles there compare to your typical tomato in an American supermarket, but I’m always impressed by our economy’s ability to move everything everywhere any time of year. Also, produce is cheaper than in the US, at least in both supermarkets we went to. Olive oil is also dirt-cheap. However, most stuff costs about the same in euros as the US equivalent would in dollars, which is unfortunate for us, given that 1 euro=$1.43ish right now.

10. It’s weird being in a country knowing that their economy has collapsed and that there’s been massive social unrest recently. The graffiti in Athens seemed like a whisper of young people gathering in protest and revolt, and the desperation of some of the people selling trinkets on the street hints at less-than-good times. But you wouldn’t know any of this hanging out at a beach club on Mykonos or watching the sun set off of Santorini. I wonder how bad it is for the people we saw and interacted with. I wonder if there are always young children selling flowers on the street and getting shooed out of restaurants by the waiters. I wonder how much more of this I would know if I spoke Greek or paid attention.

Awkwardness and beach parties

Growing up, I always told myself that someday, I’d be less awkward. In middle and high school, I never quite figured out how to do many of the things my peers were into. I went to dances in middle school knowing that I’d spend the afternoon sitting with friends outside absorbed in some boy-related drama. This was partially because seventh-grade me was a complete drama magnet, but also because I was terrified to venture onto the dance floor, lest I be compared to the popular kids who seemed to know what they were doing. I could never figure out clothes—my uniform by high school was pretty much jeans and a t-shirt, and I was baffled by the idea of dressing up and trying to coordinate shoes with an outfit. My hair didn’t go into a ponytail easily, and even when up, it never looked as effortlessly pulled together as so many other girls’ cross country practice hairstyles.

I’d always assumed that by a certain age, I’d figure this all out. Not that I’d be popular or trendy, but that I would be able to dress myself and make my hair look decent on a regular basis. To a certain extent, I’ve been able to do this. I’m proud to report that less than half of my wardrobe is made of t-shirts with writing on them, and I have enough pairs of shoes and boots that I can usually scrape together a respectable outfit. I can drink, something high school me thought I’d never be able to say. I feel ok in most social situations.

I thought about this all while we were en route to Greece. We’re staying on Mykonos and Santorini—two incredibly touristy Greek Islands. On Mykonos, our guidebook informs us, the bar scene picks up around 4am, and bars don’t close until 9am. I realized that I’m finally old enough to go out drinking and dancing (Greece has no drinking age, and the purchase age is sixteen).

We went to a bunch of beaches on Mykonos yesterday. All of them had bars and were mostly populated by twenty-somethings , and one (called Super Paradise) was particularly lively, with eardrum-shattering techno playing. It looked like what I’ve always imagined Cancun to be over spring break. And I realized that probably the last thing on earth I wanted to do was hang out and drink on the beach. Granted, this probably would have been different if I’d had friends with me. But I spent most of the day reading (Collapse, by Jared Diamond), and I had a great day.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’ve always been like this. Last spring break, I took a road trip with Clive, and we ended up in Las Vegas for a few nights because we were climbing at Red Rocks. We drove around the strip, got out and walked it for a bit and contemplated going into casinos and checking out some of the famous Vegas attractions. But we were a little creeped out by all the neon and got bored, so we ended up hanging out in our youth hostel eating Mexican sweet bread and watching Spy Kids 2. As a kid, I spent hours and hours reading whenever I had free time, oblivious to or not caring about the fact that friends were swimming or hanging out in the sun. In high school, I read McSweeneys Lists and played Scattergories with friends on Friday nights. I’ve done the nerdy, random thing for my entire life.

Hanging out on Greek beaches, I realized I’m not over all of my old insecurities. I don’t want to walk around in a bikini in Europe, because everyone here is tan and skinny and has a tummy that isn’t covered in weird red bumps. I don’t want to go out drinking, because I’m pretty sure I’d end up by myself in the corner, half-nodding my head along with the techno. But that’s ok. I don’t have to be the kind of person aspiring to someday be cool enough to go to beach parties. I don’t have to do what everyone else appears to be doing to have fun. In the four days I’ve been in Greece, I’ve read three books, re-learned the alphabet and eaten some damn good food. I know I could go out dancing or drinking with friends, but I also know I don’t have to. Mostly, I know it’s ok to feel awkward (particularly in the face of European genetic superiority). And anyway, all those attractive, bronzed young people can suck it, because they probably don’t have a wildly successful blog.

Touchdown: Athens

I am officially in Athens and running on about twelve hours of sleep over the past three nights combined. My body has no idea where it is, what time it is or what's going on. And Greece is completely different than I expected. There's really awesome graffiti art everywhere, there are children begging for money who come up to you when you're eating, and the whole city looks, sounds and smells more like Accra than Paris or London. Pedestrian right of way does not exist, and there are guys hawking copy watches and other random trinkets everywhere. The Acropolis just sits on top of a hill, with lights on all around it, glowing in its beautiful state of disrepair. Tomorrow, I'll probably be better able to process this all, but right now, it just feels a bit surreal.

Microbe vs. human: the battle begins

Well, I'm off tomorrow. I'll be spending ten days in Greece with my family before heading over to Ghana to intern with Dad. I could say a bunch of insightful stuff right now about carbon emissions or changing the world, but I don't really feel like it. So instead, I'm going to detail my plan to decisively defeat all the Ghanaian microbes that are conspiring to get me sick as we speak.

Last time I was in Ghana was in the summer of 2008. I spent three weeks traveling around with Dad and my friend Carol, and I got decently sick. Not death-defyingly so, but by the end of that trip, I was eating about 400 calories a day and had lost 10-15 pounds.

This time, I'm ready. I've been training for this all semester by consuming as much bacteria as I can: raw milk, expired yogurt, homemade kombucha, expired raw milk...I should have at least three trillion good happy bacteria in my intestines, ready to fight. But just in case, I have the most comprehensive, no-nonsense med kit ever, and I am going to outsmart and outlast anything that tries to get me in less-than-perfect physical condition, microbe or otherwise. Here's what I'm hauling with me *possible TMI warning for people who get weirded out by indirect references to vaginas*:

-Ibuprofen, for good old-fashioned cramps and other assorted aches and pains
-Pepto-Bismol, to calm my tummy dragon down (his name is Chester, and he gets really excited in developing countries)
-Immodium, in case Chester does not listen to the Pepto-Bismol
-Two courses of cipro (an antibiotic), in case the tummy issues are actually Chester being attacked by unhappy bacteria that the raw milk bacteria are unable to subdue
-Anti-yeast infection medication, in case taking said antibiotics messes up my delicate bacteria-yeast balance
-Sunscreen, because I am a devoted fan of Cosmo's Practice Safe Sun Campaign (srsly guys, it's the most important issue ever)
-Triple antibiotic ointment, in case the whole giant-trenches-full-of-trash-on-the-side-of-the-road thing results in an injury
-Anti-itch cream, for when those pesky disease-carrying mosquitoes decide I taste good
-Malarone, for when said mosquitoes end up being female and members of genes Anopheles (aka malaria-transmitting ones)
-Plan B, in case some non-consensual shit goes down. Told you I was ready for everything.

In addition, I am vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid and hepatitis A and B. And I just got a tetanus booster in January. So suck it, microbes. The only way you're getting me sick is with rabies (please no).

Things that make life beautiful

It's finals season, which means I've been studying and writing papers for the past three or four days. So I just wanted to take a minute to think about some of the awesome, happy things in the world and remind myself that there are so many things that matter much more than finals.


Things that make the world an amazing place:

brunch with friends
wearing dresses
summer rainstorms
sex, love and heartbreak
one of those sunsets that looks like the entirety of the human condition spelled out in color
mint tea
staying up until 3am talking about revolution
walking barefoot through mud or damp grass
singing around a campfire
family stories
fresh, homemade cheese
the feeling you get hanging 100 feet off the ground at a belay station with your best friend next to you
a wolf's distant howl on a cold night


Things that are so much more important than finals:

fixing our food system
making a world where the lives of humans and non-humans are all valued and respected
cultivating awesome friendships with people who are just as radical as you
believing in something with your heart and soul
learning how to live without oil
making music
learning how to trust someone completely
getting rid of zoos
writing something that matters

Macro vs. micro

Instead of studying for finals (because, really, who cares how DNA is transcribed?), I've been reading (shocker, I know). I just finished The Devil's Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea. It's a beautiful narrative following a group of Mexicans who attempted to cross into the US through the Arizona desert. The route they chose is notoriously deadly, and of the original group of twenty-six men who set out for El Norte, fourteen of them were flown home in bodybags. This is not an anomaly. This happens all the time. As you sit here, reading this, there are men and women walking through the desert who are dying of heat and thirst and exhaustion. They will likely rot in the desert alone. Their bodies will not be identified. Their family will not be notified. They will disappear.

There's a very good reason why this happens. It's not because the desert is hot. It's not because there are people who want to come to the United States, whatever the cost. It's because of criminally insane border policies and politics. It's because of US immigration policy and trade liberalization and global economic factors that are driving Mexican families further into poverty. It's not about individual choices, any more than climate change is caused by us all not driving Priuses.

The other book I've been reading is called Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Janet Poppendieck. Her thesis is essentially that food banks and soup kitchens are doing more harm than good in the effort to combat hunger. That might sound weird, so bear with me for a minute.

 Hunger is a very visceral issue. We identify with it easily, and it's one of the most noncontroversial charitable activities in the world. Most major religions have specific provisions in their holy texts about feeding the hungry. For those of us who are food secure, the idea that people in the United States of America don't know where their next meal is coming from is deeply disturbing and makes us feel awful and a bit guilty. We debate the merits of giving spare change to homeless guys, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who seriously believes it's wrong to provide someone who's hungry with a meal.

So we have all this guilt and frustration. And we channel it into organizing food drives and volunteering at food banks. Let me be clear: these things are not bad. They're not wrong. But they are a band-aid. They're not solving a problem. And the people who do this work for a living know this. Food bank directors are painfully aware that they're not fixing anything. These things are called "emergency food" for a reason. They're supposed to be an exception. But they've become the rule. And, Poppendieck argues, by directing so much energy at this band-aid strategy, we've stopped trying to solve the problem of hunger. We, as Americans, don't demand increases in food stamp benefits. We don't have meaningful public discourse about defining the federal poverty line in more realistic terms. We drop a can of food in a bin at the store and feel a little better.

Why are people hungry in the United States? More to the point, why do we frame this as an issue of hunger? We've somehow managed to frame the issue of poverty almost entirely in terms of hunger. Poppendieck speaks at length about other factors causing poverty. Real wages have declined precipitously since the 1970s.  Housing costs have gone up, to the point where they're routinely 50% or more of a low-income family's budget. People are not poor because they make bad choices. People are not food insecure or hungry because they buy cigarettes.

Reading these books concurrently has put me in an uncomfortable place with regards to activism. I'm a micro girl. I want to help people. I want to go work for No More Deaths and put jugs of water out in the desert so people won't die. I want to hand out food at the FamilyWorks Food Bank in Seattle, where I've volunteered for much of my life. I want to see people smile. I want to talk to them. I want to make everything better.

This is work that needs to be done, to be sure. But it's not going to solve the underlying problems. Giving delirious desert walkers water is not going to stem the tide of immigrants who are literally willing to go through hell to get to this country. Handing out cans of beans to people who need them won't raise the minimum wage or change the fact that one-eighth of Americans are currently on food stamps.

I don't think macro policy work is necessarily the answer either. To be sure, I would rather live in a country where we feel strongly enough about human rights that we give anyone who is unable to feed their family money to do so. I would rather live in a country with closed borders that has a reasonable number of visas and a humane policy for dealing with people who are living here illegally. But more than that, I want to live in a world without poverty and inequality. I want to live in a world where you can make enough working as a cashier at Safeway that you don't need food stamps to buy a bagel and banana on your lunch break. I want to live in a world where our border is open to anyone who wants to come across it, and more than that, I want to live in a world where we don't have thousands of people willing to risk death to come here because they can find meaningful, well-paying work at home. I want to live in a world where we don't need food stamps as much as we don't need food banks. And that world is never going to come about through government reform.

I'm not going to end with an answer or a compromise. I know I need to read more, and think more. I know you can do macro and micro. I know there are options and people who've thought about this before.

But I would like to ask you to spend just a few seconds of your life right now thinking about some of these people. Think about the people who, right now, are walking across the Arizona desert in search of a better life, the people who are half-crazy with heat and dehydration and have nothing to keep them going except hope and prayer. Think about the people who work one or two jobs and have food stamps and still can't afford to feed their families, the people who skip meals and pretend they're not hungry so their kids won't go to school with empty stomachs. These people are not literary devices or abstractions. They exist right now, in this country. If that's something that you believe should change, think about something you want to do. Something you would do if you had time. Anything. Anything at all. And even if you can't do it right now, keep it with you. Pass it on.

Epic summer countdown

Now that I've laid out my life plans, it's time to lay out my summer plans. For quick and easy reference, I am referring to this summer as Operation Acquire an Intestinal Parasite and Huge Carbon Footprint While Changing the World and Learning How to Milk Cows (OAIPHCFWCWLHMC, for short).

First stop: Greece. I'm chilling with my family for about ten days in Athens and on two Greek islands. This will not accomplish any of the world-changing or cow-milking alluded to in my operation, but it will make a dent in the carbon footprint. Also, I will probably get a nice tan.

Second stop: Ghana. I'm interning with my dad's company, Burro, which sells things designed to allow people with almost no money to be more productive. Right now, they rent rechargeable batteries and sell battery-powered LED lights (which replace kerosene lanterns) and battery-powered cell phone chargers. (Many/most Ghanaian villages have no electricity, so cell phones usually get rounded up by an enterprising person and taken to an on-grid location to charge. This is very inconvenient and costs people a decent amount of money.)

After doing some market research with existing clients, Dad is looking at expanding into agricultural inputs, so I will be researching options for this with a Ghanaian university student. I have really mixed feelings about offering people in developing countries (or anywhere, really) agricultural chemicals. On the one hand, ag chemicals are demonstrably pretty not-good for life. On the other hand, Ghanaian farmers are going to use pesticides whether we supply them or not (probably), and it's so completely not my place or job to go around lecturing actual farmers about how to feed their families. So I will try not to worry too much about the macro effects and focus on learning cool stuff about micro-level agricultural policy and marketing and telling people's stories on the Burro website.

I'm really excited for this, though. For one, I've never had a proper full-time internship with a large degree of autonomy. Much less one in Ghana where I'll be working with a Ghanaian student. I'm hoping to learn as much as possible about the lives of Burro customers, agriculture-related or otherwise. I'm also looking forward to driving the official Burro pickup truck, which is painted bright lime green and has a donkey's head on it (painted, that is. Not a real donkey's head.) Also, I plan to acquire at least one intestinal parasite in Ghana. Maybe I can even break my weight-loss-due-to-violent-illness record (last trip, I was there for 2.5 weeks and lost about 15 pounds).

After Ghana, I'll be home for about a month. Most likely working for my corporate overlords and spending the rest of my time reading about Ecuador.

And then...Ecuador!!! I just got official confirmation that I get to spend two weeks before my study abroad program starts working on an Ecuadorian farm/wildlife refuge. According to the email from the guy who runs the place, I am expected to work 7am-3pm weekdays doing any and all of the following things:

-cultivating the fields 
-taking care of both wild and domesticated animals
-fixing fences
-building
-milking cows 
-any other thing that we need to do


Which means OMG I GET TO LEARN HOW TO MILK A COW. This is serious, guys. This is worth at least +15 hippie points.


And then I'll be studying abroad!


I'm off in a little over a week, and I'll try to update as much as I can while I'm traveling the globe. Hopefully I won't get killed by a cow, or the aforementioned intestinal parasite.

Life plans

I've been getting the "what do you want to do with your life?" question a lot lately, and I thought I'd just summarize my thoughts here so I can have a definitive record to laugh at when I'm 30 and actually have a job that's completely unlike what I'm describing. Basically, my future can be boiled down into three competing (and not necessarily mutually exclusive) post-grad plans, which each have a story arc that follows logically from them. So, without further ado, I present Rachel's Grand Conspiracy to Save the World, Find Love and Happiness and Learn to Make Some Really Cool Hippie Foods, Guys.

plan a: journalism


post grad: Find a journalism internship or job, preferably with a lefty magazine that does quality investigative reporting (oh hey Mother Jones/oh fine, High Country News, you're pretty legit too).

where this goes: Become a freelancer or get on the investigative team of an awesome publication. Expose toxic waste, corporate greenwashing and how the world's actually going to hell way faster than people think. Get better at multimedia, take awesome trips and report on them, have a really cool blog.

how my whiny liberal ideals do: Rest comfortably in the knowledge that I'm bringing the truth out into the light of day, rest less assured in the knowledge that I'm making suffering into a form of pornography for white upper class people and that my livelihood depends on other people having to live through wars, rape, famine and environmental destruction. Eventually become cynical and bitter, but join a food co-op and feel better about myself.

how I live: With a small garden, but that's probably it. I wouldn't have the time to have a full agricultural operation, do a community garden, knit or any other handicraft type things. I probably have a car that's fuel efficient ish but not great. I probably fly a lot.

changing the world: Not directly. But potentially non-directly in important ways.


plan b: become an actual hippie


post-grad: Move back home and do Wilderness Awareness School's Residential Program. Spend the year learning about tracking, yurt-building and a ton of other useful life skills. Work at Safeway on non-school days, get food stamps and debate whether or not I can afford raw milk.

where this goes: Possibly into one of the other life options, but I get super involved in community gardens, the local food scene, co-ops and the like. I quit Safeway but continue to work in hippie grocery stores like the Madison Market Co-op. I get some chickens and some goats and have raw milk all the time. I make most of my own food. I blog all the time and maybe write a book about the grocery store industry that a bunch of upper middle class white foodies buy so they can feel guilty and laugh at my stories about crazy people. I don't have a real job because I don't really need one.

An alternate plan, plan 2b, would involve a brief but illustrious career in somewhat illegal resistance measures, after which I retire, disillusioned, or wind up in federal prison for the rest of my life. So there's always that.

how my whiny liberal ideals do: Feel amazing and happy much of the time, but live with a nagging worry that I'm not doing anything to change the system, and a nagging knowledge that opting out of problems doesn't fix them. Somewhat reassure myself that teaching kids how to garden is probably super-worthwhile, and that I'll be able to take care of myself after peak oil decently well.

how I live: No car, and killer legs from biking all over Seattle. With neighbors who are also hippies or who hate me because of the goats. I probably have a composting toilet, and I make some awesome kale chips. I use the the words "commons", "co-op", "community garden" and "industrial capitalism" a lot.

changing the world: Not really, but teaching the interested and privileged in it to live better, and prepping us all for the crash. Seriously, it's coming, guys.

plan c: international development

post-grad: Do the Peace Corps, which is a catch-all term for "live in a developing country for a few years and do some type of development project". Probably not the actual Peace Corps, though. Probably something more like permaculture or eco-stoves.

where this goes: I get really involved in some cool project and want to stay in that country. I spend 5-10 years traveling around the region I'm working in and doing on-the-ground development work. I start to miss my family and start a nonprofit or business which will allow me to keep doing what I want but spend some time back home in Seattle too. Possible alternate: I get burned out, go to grad school and spend my life teaching idealistic undergrads about politics and the environment and why everything is really, really screwed but life is awesome anyway.

how my whiny liberal ideals do: I feel good because I'm "helping people", but I spend a lot of time worrying about capitalism and neocolonialism and why I'm spending time telling other people how to run their lives when there are very real problems with poverty in the United States. I also have a huge carbon footprint from flying to Latin America all the time.

how I live: Pretty flexible schedule, lots of hard work. Abroad, I have a house which is very nice by local standards, with water and nice locally made furniture. In the US, not much of anything--maybe a small house or condo, maybe a car. I eat local foods abroad because that's what people eat in other normal countries, but I don't spend a bunch of time fermenting tea and learning how to make cheese.

changing the world: For some people. And unlike with plan b, they won't be the rich white ones, mostly. Small steps, but steps.


So there you go. This summer will be a nice crash course in plan c, with a bit of b thrown in there, but I'll talk about that another time.