Z WELCOME HOME TOUR - EAST COAST

Z landed in JFK and headed off to New Haven with Becca. There they spent a lovely afternoon with Elizabeth Magenheimer and Jerry Coffey at the beloved Huntington Street abode, and even got to take a swim! Aunt Laurel and cousing Lyndsay drove down from Storrs to pick them up to take them to see the Metzgar clan.


It was about this time that Z began to feel the heat. As a January baby, she had not really experienced summer yet, since it was winter in Africa. And let’s just say she was not pleased. I was not present, but I have heard that it was in Aunt Laurel’s car that she began to express her displeasure.

So in a cranky and hot mood, Z visited with Aunt Laurel, Uncle Russ, Kent and Lyndsay. The next morning she saw her grandparents, Mimi and Papa Metzgar, where she grabbed Papa’s nose, and her other cousins, Cali, Jake and Juliana.

Then off to Wellfleet in Cape Cod to see Seth, Chuck, Aunt Nilsa and her Massachusetss grandparents, the Shepsles! Seth got to squeeze her a lot, and she met some “FORKS” (Friends Of Rise and Ken) and also a “DORK” (Seth says that’s Nilsa, since she is the Daughter Of Rise and Ken). Z also took in her first drive-in movie, which was "MAMA MIA!" with Nilsa, Rise, Seth, Chuck, Becca, Somi (Nilsa's dog) and Chandra.



While on the Cape, Charlie visited Aunties Paula and Anne in Truro who used to live around the corner in Cranston – we will all miss them so much!


Z and Becca finished off the Cape Cod tour with a visit to Kate Doak and her crew of twins. Just think…twins. I have a shiny new respect for these brave parents…Kate and Sam, Jill and Steve, Angelina and Brad…what were you people thinking?

After a near miss on the highway which Z Charles slept through, Becca returned the old green Jeep to Aunt Betsy’s driveway with a new hood which, of course, is blue and doesn’t match – then onto the airport where Z had her first all-out airplane freakout on her way to her new home in Chicago!

Zora Charles leaves South Africa

We spent the last night in a hotel in Capetown near Green Point and watched the sunset over the waves. Zora’s favorite South African babysitter Merle came for one last night so we could meet Gamal and Cornell at a restaurant called Beluga. What we are learning is that our fabulous hipster friends have begun to tailor our outings to whether we are taking Zora along. This was revealed to us when Gamal changed the location of our dinner once he learned that we were successful in booking a babysitter.




The next morning, on our way out of Cape Town, we swooped in for a quick swing through Greenmarket Square. Z Charlie Charles sported a new reggae beanie which went splendidly with her “ONE LOVE” onesie.

We flew a short ride from Cape Town to JoBurg, where we had some hours to kill in the airport lounge. Then, we settled into our South African Airways flight from JoBurg to JFK by way of Dakar, Senegal. This would be a total of 15 hours in the air, plus one hour on the ground in Dakar. I paid a baggage porter to expedite the checking in of our shall we say AMPLE assortment of luggage, but in the process we did not get ticketed in a bulkhead where the bassinets are available. Somehow, on our way into security, we bumped into the queen of South African Air and with a click of her wand (shhhhhring!), we were reticketed into ideal seats with a bassinet!



As it was Zora Charles 6th month birthday, we conducted the monthly photo shoot on the flight in her bassinet. Lucky for all of us, she decided to sleep for most of the flight, except in Dakar where she performed an impressive screaming fit which was brief, but memorable, combining an array of sounds from her famous game show wrong answer buzzes to the whistle of oncoming trains and into a new realm of wild insects in the deep, wet jungle and the sound one makes when finding a slug underfoot.

All in all, a very successful overseas flight for Z.

If Koty and Jet were Penguins...

...they would live on the beach in harmony. When we visited the penguin colony at Boulders beach (part of Table Mountain National Park), we imagined our dogs living amongst the waddling, flightless birds called the African Jackass penguins, and thought, yes, they could be quite happy here.

EYE-TO-EYE WITH A SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALE

Z Charlie, Becca and I are spending the last few days here in South Africa on the Whale Coast. Right now we are in Arniston, which is a remote town with three names -- one for a British shipwreck (Arniston), one for a traditional fishing village (Kassiesbaai) and one for a limestone cave (Waenhuiskrans). We have a sea-facing room with a wall of windows looking out onto the Indian Ocean -- green-blue waves crashing on the beach. Although pressures from across the sea keep seeping into our room..

After a very active and sleepless night, this morning Z and I took a drive to Cape Aghulhas, the southernmost point in Africa, where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic. This part of the Overberg is criss-crossed with dirt roads, so although we are staying nearby it took us an hour to get to the point. It was beautiful, and although the color of the two oceans is strikingly different, I could not see the line of convergence that I had hoped for. Instead, the water splashed on the rocks much like it does in Arniston.

I have a thought about the lack of sleep last night. It follows a day of great discovery. Yesterday, in the morning, we set out on a boat from Gansbaai (Ivanhoe) to encounter whales. Seals flip in circles in the harbor, which reeks of the fishpacking plant. Within a few minutes of leaving the port, we were surrounded by Southern Right whales! For two hours, we floated off the coast, communing with these huge and amazing mammals. Zora slept down below for half the ride, which allowed us to get eye-to-eye with the whales on the bow.

"musings" about the hands of friends

One of the high points of this summer course has been a weekly feature called "Monday Musings with Meredith". Every Monday night, we would all come together and Meredith would create a relaxed environment for sharing thoughts and feelings about our experience (candles, music, etc). This past Monday, everyone came over to our apartment in Cape Town, where we ate fish tacos and shared in our last Monday musings. It was so mellow in fact that Charlie (Z) chose to snooze through the whole event in the other room.

So since today is Wednesday, I feel free to muse about the hands of friends, on behalf of Z Charles. To try to communicate what I observed of her personal experience.

One of Z's biggest adjustments has been to how large her family has become. First, Becca's students all are very close to Z. There's an inner circle whose faces/voices/hands she loves and is going to miss very much: there are some who play peek-a-boo with her for hours(Fatima, Naomi) whose lap she sits in gladly(Iris), who makes her do Swazi kicks (Zehra), who gives her a bottle (Kara), who makes her light up (Brandon), who inspires her burps (Alex), who dreams about her (Alexis), who wave and yell across the table(all!)

Also, her family of African friends is huge! This man on the right, who is one of Musa's neighbors, offered Becca 5 cows for Zora at the opening of the new outdoor theater. This was a dowry offering, of course. In Swaziland, and in Cape Town, everyone likes to pass the baby from hand to hand, from boy to girl to man to woman and back. In this way she is blessed by the hands she passes through. Sometimes, Z will smile at her new friend, and then at the next. But inevitably, she starts to wail in the ear of one of her new brothers or sisters. In this moment, all her ten chins will jiggle, the tears will roll and we hear the sound of her crying from a deep, deep place in her soul. I choose to believe that the crying is not triggered randomly, or by some sense of strangeness -- instead I believe the tears come when she realizes that this chain goes on forever. Not being able to handle the enormity of the human capacity to love, she needs to release her overwhelming emotions.

Every Monday Musings began and ended with the holding of hands and a moment of silence.

singing in the ...

This is the view from our apartment in Cape Town, which is in the Gardens neighborhood, just under the Table Mountain cable car. The little stars are actually raindrops catching the flash of my camera. This is the 5th day of rain in a row, though the weather is ever-changing. The sky over the mountain will be dark and filled with danger, while the harbor dances in the sun breaking through the clouds. Zora and I drove up the West Coast, north of the city a couple of days ago and passed under rainbow after rainbow along the beach.

Yesterday, we were on the UCT campus and shared workshops with UCT theater students led by faculty member Gay Morris (who runs a very high energy room) and Heather Schiff from Playback South Africa. Here's a photo of Zora with Becca's good friend/collaborator Gamal Palmer who teaches the Yale Summer session course with Becca and Meredith Coleman-Tobias. Z loves her Unc Gamal and Meredith! She is adding her thoughts to an end-of-day check in with the students...

Today, we started workshops in Guguletu, a big township near the airport, in a clinic associated with the University of Cape Town Public Health program. The students are working with a group of sero-discordant couples (one HIV+, one HIV-) -- and they are amazing! So willing to jump in physically. Many of them speak Xhosa as a first language, so we are lucky to have Thando, a local theater artist, to translate and participate in the workshop.

a little seattle in cape town

Rainy days in Cape Town so we are blogging from a cafe called seattle on the 4th of july, which feels right. Table Mountain is hiding in the clouds. We hope to go to Robben Island tomorrow, but the weather may not cooperate. Here's a photo from last weekend when z charles and i headed down to Cape Point with some of the Yale students on a glorious sunny day!

Don Pedro's

Zora hung out in Don Pedro's today, in Woodstock just outside of Cape Town. This is a restaurant bar, with a little raised stage in the corner, where apparently many anti-apartheid meetings took place. The mist on Table mountain has not dispersed so it's a cloudy day in Cape Town, good for eating red lentils and pita bread and reading the books for tomorrow's class with the students: WRETCHED OF THE EARTH by Fanon and GLOBALIZING AIDS by Cynthia Patton.

Z's brain is growing crazy and she wants constant play. Right now she's grabbing a plastic folded map, trying to shove it in her mouth, with little success. She ate her first "food" last night -- a little bit of prune apple juice. Perhaps this is why she was UP ALL NIGHT. The juice helped with her "issue" so today she seems more herself, squealing, sleeping, eating. Her new favorite toy is her monkey with little rings that click together when she shakes it. He's getting a workout today as she shake-shake-shakes him around!

Worcester, South Africa

Today we are in the mountainous area known as the Overberg, in the town of Worcester, where one of the main sites of SATVI (South African TB Vaccine Initiative) is located. SATVI is engaged in clinical trials and testing of over 6,000 people here, which has one of the highest TB rates in the world. One of the cornerstones of the program is the training of local community members to perform the testing and followup of the adults and kids, rather than by doctors and lab technicians. These local workers are called surveillance officers.

Becca and Gamal have chosen to create a theater workshop for these local surveillance officers as part of the Yale summer session course on theater and public health. The local workers and Yale students gather in a space at the hospital to create a space for imaginative expression of the trauma and stress the local workers experience in the course of their work on TB. One of my favorite exercises has been when the local workers pair off and have to try to top each other's experience of TB while singing in an operatic singing voice.

In other news, Z Charles has decided to withhold all poop for 2 days. This has led to some excruciating screaming in the car, the internet cafe, at dinner. Negotiations for the release of the poop continues. Will keep you all posted. BSM