Oops - Should Be Second Photo

Oops, I just realized there's one more photo that I want to put up
here. These are some of the kids that stopped playing ping pong to
pose when they saw me pointing my camera in their direction. This shot
should really be appearing AFTER the next shot, which explains more
about the project and stuff. Sorry.

A Trip to Baoji (and Xian)

It's Thursday morning here in Nanning, and I returned yesterday
afternoon from my first trip to our project in Baoji, which was simply
a great trip. To give you some general context, Baoji is in the
southwest of Shaanxi province, more or less in the geographic center
of China. This puts is roughly 1000 km north of Nanning, in an area
where the climate and landscape are much closer to the climate and
landscape of many parts of the US and Europe -- lots of farms, grass,
dedicuous trees, rolling hills leading to larger mountins, etc. It was
interesting for me how my heart reacted to seeing green grass and
deciduous tress and "normal" mountains again, after spending a month
here in Nanning where the vegetation is tropical and the mountains are
closer to the unusual (for me) steep mountains of the old Chinese
scrolls.

Baoji is also in a fairly narrow valley between two mountain ranges,
one of which you can see rising in the background in this photo. The
range opposite this one (this shot is looking south, toward Sichuan --
or Szechuan -- which begins not too far away to the south of Baoji) is
more of a long high ridge than a mountain range, but together they,
and mountains that continue on both sides of them north and south as I
understand, combine to make Baoji one of the good flat areas from
which to journey westward out of central China, heading most
immediately into the south-eastern reaches of Gansu province, and
ultimately into the Gansu corridor, another much longer defile between
mountains further north and west that, like Baoji, was on the old Silk
Road that we've all heard so much about.

Adding to the historical interest that really appeals to me, as a
former student of Chinese history and culture, is the fact that the
nearest airport to Baoji (2-1/2 hours drive away) is the airport for
Xian, which you may have heard of as the city closest to the site of
Chin Shi Huang's tomb with the terracotta warriors. Though this trip
presented no time either to visit the tomb or to explore the general
area, I am very excited that my job -- yes, consider: this is my job
now! -- allows me to visit these places and that in the future I'll be
able to extend a weekend or take a week's break after a visit to
Baoji, to get into the history of the silk road or visit the tombs.

Then there are the kids, at our project in Baoji -- The Children
Center. In the next several shots you'll see the kids at the center,
and me playing or posing with them. I am not really going to put shots
of our AIDS project in Nanning up here, partly because it's not really
a photogenic building or area, but mostly because confidentiality and
patient privacy with our patients there is important. In the case of
the children center, as you will see, the kids LOVE (for the most
part) posing for pictures, and the project's field coordinator tells
me it's OK to put these on my personal site. This is a project that
provides all round care (housing, meals, school classes as well as
general social and socialization support, and medical care) for street
children. The kids come from literally all over China, because Baoji
is an important railroad crossroads. Some have run away from home;
some have families that left them with relatives or friends when the
parents moved to a big city on the coast to find work, and then when
the parents stopped sending support money the friends or relatives
told the kids they could no longer support them; some simply ran away
from abusive or unhappy homes. The individual stories can be quite
upsetting, but the truly amazing thing about these kids -- nearly all
of them -- is how well behaved they are, how active they are both in
classes and at playtime, how little they fight or argue with each
other, and so on. Anyway, let's just say that both these projects here
in China are ones I'm very proud to call my job now.

Badminton Time

In the mornings and afternoons the kids take formal school classes
(almost all in the center, though a few go to outside public schools)
with teachers employed by MSF. After lunch, and after the afternoon
classes, they get an extended playtime in the courtyard in front of
our building, where there are two ping pong tables (yes, the kids are
amazing and I will never dare to play against them -- at a young age
they are already holding the paddle in such a way as to apply very
specific spins to the ball, depending on what they want it to do after
it bounces), a basketball net, and space to play badminton or other
games. Having not picked up a raquet of any sort since leaving LA
(boy, do I ever miss tennis!), I was delighted to see that I have a
workable backhand in badminton and could hold my own quite well with
the kids. The goal, not having a net, is to hit the birdie over the
head of your opponent -- or so it seems, at least. I'm really glad I
have some Chinese, because it allowed me to really talk to some of
these kids.

New Friends

All I'm going to say about this kid is that I had a blast playing
badminton with him, talking with him, and just seeing him interact
with everyone. He is really a great kid, full of energy and with a
real sparkle in his eyes. I'm torn between really hoping he will be
reconnected with his family soon (and that the reconnection will work)
and hoping he'll be there next month so I can see him again...though
of course if the first happens we'll all be very happy.

Play Time

Another shot of one of the kids, with me in the background. Once
Selina, my colleague from Nanning who is medical coordinator for our
two projects here in China, started taking pictures of me playing, and
the kids saw that I was enjoying taking them on in badminton one by
one, many of them started crowding around either for a picture (many
of them are definitely hams when there's a camera around!) or to play
badminton, or both.

Group Portrait with Paul

The guy on the right in this photo is one of the older kids in the
center, and he had a lot of fun trying out his English with me and
showing me all the drawings and cartoons in his notebook. It seems he
hasn't yet quite made his mind if he wants to be Batman or Jackie Chan
when he grows up. Next time I go up, if he's still there (there was a
rumor he might be able to go home to his family in Shanghai), we'll
see how his career plans are progressing.

Play Ball!

What can I say about this one? :-)

Paul at His Desk

Earlier this week, in an attempt to begin answering the requests for
more photos, I asked one of my colleagues (Manuel, our newly arrived
logistician from Lyon) to take a picture of me at my desk. For those
of you interested, this is where you can picture me going about my
work day when I am in the office. Of course, I travel often either to
the AIDS clinic here in town, or up to Baoji to visit the Street
Children project there...but this is home base now. Ciao!

Nanning Skyline - Count the Scaffolds!

This picture was taken from the top of the little bridge you can see
in another photo, looking out toward the edge of the city, more in the
direction where my office is (and where I sit as I write this note),
towards an area where the construction of new buildings is nonstop
(And roads, and even bridges -- my map of greater Nanning is full of
roads and bridges either "planned" or "under construction.")

One of my key impressions of China (both when I visited the mainland
during my year in Taiwan in 83-84, and now) is that building is
constant. This country is just constantly expanding its
infrastructure, growing and building. It lends a feeling of excitement
and change to daily life, but of course is also makes more than enough
dust and ambient noise in the air! And don't be thinking these
builders work any kind of shorter work week -- the ones working on the
three houses that surround where I live are at it by 8 every morning
of the week. :-)

A Walk in the Park

Thanks to everyone who has been pushing me to post more photos. Your
nudging got me to recognize that it makes no sense in this tropical,
frankly polluted city to expect a clear and beautiful day with blue
skies to go out and shoot photos! So yesterday I took a stroll at
lunch through a park that is a very short bus ride from the area where
both my office and my home are right now, and I was so glad to
discover this lovely oasis of green and peace and relative quiet in
this dusty and crowded and loud and highly energetic city.

The main feature of this park is a large lake, called Nanhu which
means South Lake, but in English it's basically Nanhu Lake since how
many English speakers would know that's redundant? :-) Sort of like
the way we Americans order a sandwich with au jus sauce...which is
kinda redundant, too. But I digress. This delightful little bridge
spans the lake, meaning I have now discovered that I can take a short,
cheap bus ride to where my street hits this park, then lie around and
read on the grass or go for a walk if I like.

Moreover, since this park in some ways represents the boundary between
what I would describe as the true urban core of Nanning, on the
northern side, and on the south side the more suburban area where I
live and work now, this means that yesterday I took a long stroll (a
long, sweaty stroll, given the heat and humidity) down one of
Nanning's main shopping streets. It was good to get out and walk and
get more of a sense of life at street level here -- we have been
pretty busy, and as I said in my last post I was also sick and have
not really taken the time to get out and explore much.

I am also glad to know Nanhu Park is free for the public -- closer to
me is a park said to be quite pretty, in which for that park I need to
buy a gate ticket first -- and having no money, I could not
comply...so I ran down by the river instead. (No, don't imagine a
lovely riverfront path or anything -- it's reasonably attractive since
it's not yet very developed there, but the river is full and brown and
sluggish, the road is high up on the bank, and the views are not much
to write home about. But it's a river, and comparatively quiet.)

Ah well. If these photos appear in the order I hope (always an unknown
when I post photos, especially now that I can't access the site itself
and see how things look once I send them off...), this is the second
one you are seeing in the new batch, and there will be several more
after. Hope you enjoy and thanks for your support!

School Group at the Monument

My stroll through Nanhu Park yesterday took me past a monument or
memorial that looks like it is a memorial to the soldiers of one or
more of China's wars (though I admit I did not take the time to try to
really read it all or understand it, but I do know it has to do with
love of the country). The fun part was seeing the kids in this school
group striking poses and imitating the postures of the statue, as
their teachers tried to get them organized for a group photo.

It's quite a lovely monument in quite a lovely park. And the good news
is it's very close to me, and I understand that on the weekends they
either 1) show movies on a screen by the fountain in the park, 2) Do a
light show at or on the fountain in the park, or 3) Both of the above.
I hope to find out next weekend, and maybe I can get some pictures for
you to see!

Nanning Skyline - Again

This shows a cluster of rather attractive tall office and residential
buildings that are on one edge of the downtown area, fairly close to
the CDC (which, yes, does mean Center for Disease Control so far as I
can tell) in which MSF has our AIDS clinic here in Nanning. The
project operates in close cooperation with the Guangxi CDC, and is on
the grounds of their main complex here in town, in a very lively and
busy section of town with lots of shops, restaurants, cafes and
nightclubs.

Self Portait With Lake

This one, I know, is a little bit lame, but I was trying to make sure
you knew I was really there taking these photos -- if there had been
someone else there to take the picture for me, it would have had the
buildings in the background more clearly, with less of me in the
photo. Anyway, you are seeing in the background a bit of Nanhu Lake,
with one cluster of new highrises in the background, the same cluster
you can see in another photo that I hope is showing up before this
photo.

Paul and Marta

Everyone is asking for photos, and I'm really sorry I haven't had a
chance to take many yet or to download the few I have onto my computer
(remember, we are an international humanitarian organization, so our
money goes to project costs, not the country admin's computer...I'll
let you draw your own conclusions :-) ). But here's a picture of
Marta, the WONDERFUL seven-month old daughter of Stefano, field
coordinator for the AIDS project, and Katja, his partner. They took
this photo when we were at a rest stop on the trip back from Yangshuo
my second weekend here...for those of the Yale group who may remember
the drive back from someone's wedding somewhere some time, the drive
with Stefano, Katja, Laura (nurse in the AIDS project) and Selina
(country medical coordinator) included by far the longest and most
enjoyable round of Boticelli since at least that drive, if not ever in
my life. (Judi, if you are reading this, it made me think of you.) We
played the real rules, and trying to guess who folks were thinking of
when they asked their questions was even more fun than trying to guess
the person we were trying to figure out. What a blast!

Two Busy Weeks in China

For those of you without the time to read all of what may indeed be a pretty long entry, the bottom line is I’ve been in Nanning for two weeks now, have been quite busy with work, have overall been feeling great about everything, and am very grateful that this weekend I finally don’t have to work, since I’ve also been suffering from my first head cold in quite a while, for the past three or four days. No worries, just the usual congestion, runny nose and sore throat crap…but annoying just as things were getting into a good groove.

Also, a note about the posts here on my blog : if you are seeing this, it means I am able to post to my site. But I am not currently able to access my site, and believe I will not be able to access it from China. I still love the idea of folks posting comments to the blog, as a method of building community…but be aware I will only rarely be able to read the comments. So if you need to really reach me, feel free to write an e-mail : now that I am settled, I’d really love to hear from you !

The detailed report…from the top. My passport landed back in Paris around noon on Thursday the 31st of March, and though the departure desk initially thought it made more sense for me to fly out either Friday or Saturday, I made myself a bit annoying and ended up on an 11 :45PM flight that night. Paris to Hong Kong is a 12 hour flight with (during daylight savings time) only a six-hour time difference, which tells you something about the north-south distance. The five hours I had to spend in the late afternoon and evening at Hong Kong airport were a welcome chance to adjust a bit to being ‘back’ in Asia, if I can call it that after 21 years. The (to me still new, though it’s been open nearly two decades I think) Hong Kong airport ROCKS : it is without doubt my new favorite airport in the world. It feels space age, to me. Try it some time – you’ll like it !

The delightful thing about landing in Nanning is that four people were there to meet me – the administrator into whose role I have stepped, a British nurse from our Nanning HIV project, our assistant country administrator with whom I work very closely, and a driver. Yes, in China (at least this part of it) having a driver or two is a very nice things since the roads are terrifying chaotic. Naturally, having landed at midnight in a new city where I’d never been and finding myself suddenly in a car with all sorts of new colleagues I’d never met before was both wonderfully and a bit contextually challenging, but it was really a wonderful start.

Then began two weeks of more or less straight-through work. Since Beatrice, my predecessor, had existing plans to leave Sunday evening, I spent the weekend working with her to get a sense of which way was up and which down here in the office. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I got right into the swing of work in the office, trying hard to remember names of my new colleagues and to file them in my head with the right faces. The timing of my arrival, aside from being serendipitous in that it gave me some overlap with my predecessor, was also interesting in that MSF China held our mini-AG (mini general assembly) my first weekend here…and MSF France hosted this year. Which means that, on Thursday, I hopped in cars with many or most of my colleagues here in Nanning (from both the coordination office and the HIV project office) and drove up to Yangshuo, near Guilin, for the meetings which started with a dinner Thursday evening and ended Sunday morning.

This was mostly wonderful, in that after less than a week here I had the chance both to see one of China’s most famed beauty spots (think of the scroll paintings you may have seen of unusually steep mountains rising out of nothing – that’s Guilin and Yangshuo, both about five or six hours from where I now live), and to meet a good number of the MSF colleagues, from MSF France’s Baoji project (for which I also provide support) as well as from MSF Belgium (which also has an HIV project here in China) and MSF Hong Kong. It was also, I must admit, rather tiring in that it was my second weekend of working in a row, including trying to keep straight the names and rolls of a large number of colleagues, and to keep track of the interesting and challenging discussions (in both Chinese and English) about topics relating to MSF and our work here in China. The idea of the mini AG’s (which are held in many regions leading up the general AG each year) is to provide suggestions and ideas to the general governing structure of MSF from the actual field projects where the work is happening. It’s a wonderfully democratic and collaborative concept, but you can understand that it can all wear a boy down on his fifth through eighth day in a new job in a new field in a new country !

This last week started off great – Monday and Tuesday my energy was high, I was enjoying hosting and learning from a colleague from our Baoji project (children in difficult circumstances, mostly street children). Then Wednesday the head cold kicked in, and it was all I could do to stay energetic enough to complete the March financial close – hopefully in somewhat decent shape – Friday afternoon, before heading home to curl up with a good book (am now borrowing Harry Potter in French, though I also bought it in Chinese…the going is just too slow and hard in Chinese to make it enjoyable ‘I’m sick in bed with a cup of hot tea’ reading) and hope my first weekend without work here in China will help me kick this annoyance and get back to work fully energized on Monday.

I’d have to say I’m happy and excited about the year ahead. On the work front, I feel quite comfortable from an experience or technical standpoint that the job will benefit from my prior experiences. I believe the challenge will lie, for me, in learning and becoming conversant with MSF culture and expectations, with Chinese culture and expectations, and finding that best way to help them both merge in the project in a productive and meaningful way. This is a learning curve I am eager to work through, and I feel my colleagues (both national and international) are a great team to work with in doing so. I have already had the chance to spend two days in our HIV clinic here in town, and can only say I am proud of the work we are doing there, and I am excited to find ways I can support the clinic with my experience and work. I will visit Baoji the week of April 25, and am excited to see again the colleagues I met in Yangshuo, along with the rest of the team so they can show me hands-on all the great work they are doing.

On a personal level, the cold has me down right now, but overall I am also quite excited. Indeed, Nanning is much as I remembered China and Taiwan being 20+ years ago : loud, crowded, confusing, full of energy, constantly building, fascinatingly mixed between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ (donkeycarts sharing the road with Mercedes and diesel buses and trucks and bikes and mopeds and all other vehicles known to humans since the invention of the wheel, or so it often seems to me), and really an endlessly unfolding world that I am trying to decipher as I go. It’s not really a pretty city, but what I have seen of Guangxi province tells me there is a great deal of beauty all around me (mountains, lakes, rivers), and I look forward to exploring bus routes and other methods of getting into whatever ‘countryside’ I can find in this populous region to see if there a few mountains I can climb for a better view.

My life here will be, frankly, rather mundane : I have a day job that looks like it’ll keep me pretty busy ; part of the job will involve trips roughly every month up to Baoji, which is pretty much a full day’s travel ; part of it will also involve regular days spent at the HIV clinic here in town, which is about a ten minute bus ride away. The rest of the time I expect to do my job, try to learn how to do it better, try to improve my Chinese while maintaining my French (many of my colleagues are French, including my two housemates, so it’s a good chance to keep French going as well), and plan the occasional weekend escape to the countryside or further afield. When these happen, you can count on reports and pictures. Sorry I have no pictures to display yet – may camera didn’t make the trip to Yangshuo, or I’d have a few for you. Colleagues took one or two of me up there, and if I get my hands on them, I shall post them.

Hope this finds you well and sorry it’s so long. Take care --

And We're Off!

Visa came this morning, and with a little nagging I managed to get the departures office here at MSF HQ to arrange my ticket Paris-Hong Kong for 23:15 tonight. So I should arrive Hong Kong late afternoon tomorrow, in order to connect onward to Nanning from there. No idea whether or how I'll be able to maintain the blog from there, and if there are challenges it may take a while to work out a solution...so thanks for your support, take care, wish me luck, and keep in touch!