-30-
When I was six, my sister and I shared two Barbie dolls, a blonde-haired Barbie with a button on her back that made a kissing noise when pressed and a dime store knock-off Barbie with brown hair and gargantuan proportions, especially when compared with Barbie. We had no Ken doll, my mom made most of the dolls clothes on her sewing machine and we learned early on how to cut windows that opened like shutters into shoeboxes that were reborn as the Dream House.
My friend Christa had all the accoutrements we lacked: the house, the car, the camper, the Ken. Whenever I went to her house to play, our Barbies invariably fought over Ken, changed in and out of dozens of outfits and fought over Ken some more. Even at six, we had an appreciation, even a flair, for soap opera drama but the plotlines of our Barbies lives had little variation. She went to university, then got a job as a nurse or a teacher, our imagination around career options being somewhat limited at six. By 22, she was considered successful in her chosen field, she’d successfully seduced Ken and was married by 24. (Bygones were always bygones with the Barbie who lost out; she was always the bridesmaid.) By 26 she had her first invisible baby – neither of us had a Barbie baby – and by 30 she had three little darlings, the husband and the career.
And then the story stopped. What more could be said? What more could happen? She had done it all and done it on schedule, before the age of 30. It was time to start all over again, change outfits, change careers and change the catfights that brought Ken to her clutches in the first place.
Why, at six, did we see 30 as the end?
We use 30 as a deadline all the time: company president by 30, millionaire by 30, bureau chief by 30, settle down by 30, sow the wild oats until 30, married by 30.
Think about all the movies or books where 30 plays a part in the plot, where ambition to “do” something by 30 drives the story. The pacts that friends make: If neither of us is married by the time we’re 30…
Thirty is the age at which we have it all figured out, that we stop playing around. It’s the age by which, if you haven’t done what you set out to do, you’re probably not going to do it.
(In the newspaper business, -30- is meant to represent the end. It’s a holdover from the time of telex machines, when editors would have no idea whether you’d finished your brilliant overseas dispatch or had simply run out of money or, in some cases, electrical current.)
On this continent, 30 is way past middle age. In Zimbabwe, life expectancy is estimated to be 34, meaning a midlife crisis comes at 17 and the average Zimbabwean doesn’t live to see 35.
For my 30th birthday, I got up and went to interview the electrical company spokesperson about their HIV program. I went to lunch and ate Indian food as the owner chewed out the guard for some real or imagine slight. I went to the Trade Fair and remembered why I don’t like crowds, especially crowds of children. The minibus mate tried to weasel an extra 10 kwacha out of me, and when I looked bored and unruffled, he told me he would forgive me this time. Thank you, I forgive you too, I said. For what, he asked. For trying to cheat me on my birthday, I said. I read a handful of birthday wishes sent via email. I went home, watched a movie, cursed my cell provider for cutting out. I went for dinner with two women I’ve known for two weeks, but who’ve become friends nonetheless. Then we went to a bar where the music was lame and the men were lecherous. I went to bed and woke up the next morning feeling no different: not older, not wiser, not any less depressed by the idea of 30.
In the past week, one man I interviewed asked if writing my story was part of a school project and someone else guessed I was turning 25 when I told him it was my birthday. Back in the day, when I had just turned legal and would seethe when anyone asked to see my ID, people – smug, vain, older people – would say: “One day you’ll appreciate that.” Sadly, that day has finally come.
I might say I was lucky, at 30, to be living a life that makes me content. There are very few people in their 20s who want something as intangible as satisfaction by 30, but I feel in lots of ways that I am living a life that satisfies me – something that is far more important to me now, at 30, than being famous or married or rich. I look at friends who have chosen the more conventional path – the kind I always scripted for Barbie – and are miserable with it.
Still, I am alone and as I turn 30, it weighs on me more and more. I guess you could say I’m growing up.
-30-
Life
Every experience under the sun
Karen Palmer
806 words
2 May 2006
The Toronto Star
ONT
D03
English
Copyright (c) 2006 The Toronto Star
KIGALI, Rwanda -- There is a certain exhilarating energy to an Africa bus stand.
It is manic, confusing, chaotic and overcrowded, the vans lined up nose-to-nose in a haphazard way while dozens of boys in plastic sandals and 50 Cent T-shirts bark out strange place names and try with feigned urgency and real competitiveness to steer you toward their minibus.
There is the inevitable give-and-take about the fare, accompanied by many exclamations of "In the name of Jesus, sister! Amen!" and a second round of negotiations about that hefty bag on your back.
There is the patient or not-so-patient wait while the bus fills, squeezing in 20 where 15 would sit comfortably.
Then a delay, another delay, a start of the engine, a blaring of the radio - brassy Congolese, American rap or hip hop in an unrecognizable language - a small shift forward, a sputtering of the engine.
Through the windows, boys and girls sell glucose biscuits, sugary Fanta soft drinks, bottles of cold water, boiled eggs with salt and piri piri sauce, tiny sweet bananas, oranges that are actually green, sticks of roasted goat meat, greasy samosas from a giant tub.
And once underway, there may be a sales pitch for aphrodisiacs or a sermon ("In the name of Jesus, my sister! Amen!") or a Nigerian film playing loud enough to be heard in Nigeria.
There is always a breathtaking landscape dotted with tiny homes and cheering, waving children.
Inside the bus there are curious questions: Where are you from? What are you doing here? Where is your husband? How do you find our food, our country, our people?
There is usually a test of your knowledge of the local dialect; a pass is rewarded with delighted giggles. There are the insightful conversations about politics and development, the back-and-forth about hopes for the country. Then the shy declarations of the secret wish for more education, to one day see Canada.
At your destination, there is the budget hotel, costing anywhere from a dollar to $15 a night and described variously as a brothel, only for the desperately downtrodden or, hopefully, friendly, well-kept and clean.
On good nights, there is the sound of chirruping crickets, the buzz of motorbikes, the soccer fans down at the drinking spot cheering Arsenal or Man U or Chelsea.
On bad mornings, there is no power and only a bucket and a plastic cup for a shower.
On the streets there are wide-eyed children, some tied to their mother's back, others peering out from behind her skirt with broad smiles or looks of astonishment or fear.
Some are even bold enough to try out their English, asking and answering their sole phrase: "How are you? I am fine! How are you? I am fine!"
The continent is too big, too varied to be summed up in words: there are camels and soldiers, deserts and jungles, gorillas and lions, mystics and juju masters, chapatis and cassava, Muslims and Christians, a jumble of vibrant colours and masses of people.
There is a constant sense of struggle, endless sources of frustration, frequent assaults on the senses, brilliant scenes of innovation and resilience, heartbreaking displays of humanity, enough injustices to challenge a traveller's principles, sensibilities and long-held beliefs.
Travelling in Africa is not for the timid: you have to put yourself out there to get the most out of it. It requires equal parts compassion, patience and humour and will often reveal more about you than it will itself.
As aviator Beryl Markham wrote in her 1942 autobiography West With The Night:
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is still the host of all my darkest fears, the cradle of mysteries always intriguing, but never wholly solved.
It is the remembrance of sunlight and green hills, cool water and the yellow warmth of bright mornings.
It is as ruthless as any sea, more uncompromising than its own deserts.
It is without temperance in its harshness or in its favours. It yields nothing, offering much to men of all races.
It is what you will and it withstands all interpretation. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home.'
It is all these things but one: it is never dull.
Karen Palmer is a former Star reporter who has moved to Africa.
My friend Christa had all the accoutrements we lacked: the house, the car, the camper, the Ken. Whenever I went to her house to play, our Barbies invariably fought over Ken, changed in and out of dozens of outfits and fought over Ken some more. Even at six, we had an appreciation, even a flair, for soap opera drama but the plotlines of our Barbies lives had little variation. She went to university, then got a job as a nurse or a teacher, our imagination around career options being somewhat limited at six. By 22, she was considered successful in her chosen field, she’d successfully seduced Ken and was married by 24. (Bygones were always bygones with the Barbie who lost out; she was always the bridesmaid.) By 26 she had her first invisible baby – neither of us had a Barbie baby – and by 30 she had three little darlings, the husband and the career.
And then the story stopped. What more could be said? What more could happen? She had done it all and done it on schedule, before the age of 30. It was time to start all over again, change outfits, change careers and change the catfights that brought Ken to her clutches in the first place.
Why, at six, did we see 30 as the end?
We use 30 as a deadline all the time: company president by 30, millionaire by 30, bureau chief by 30, settle down by 30, sow the wild oats until 30, married by 30.
Think about all the movies or books where 30 plays a part in the plot, where ambition to “do” something by 30 drives the story. The pacts that friends make: If neither of us is married by the time we’re 30…
Thirty is the age at which we have it all figured out, that we stop playing around. It’s the age by which, if you haven’t done what you set out to do, you’re probably not going to do it.
(In the newspaper business, -30- is meant to represent the end. It’s a holdover from the time of telex machines, when editors would have no idea whether you’d finished your brilliant overseas dispatch or had simply run out of money or, in some cases, electrical current.)
On this continent, 30 is way past middle age. In Zimbabwe, life expectancy is estimated to be 34, meaning a midlife crisis comes at 17 and the average Zimbabwean doesn’t live to see 35.
For my 30th birthday, I got up and went to interview the electrical company spokesperson about their HIV program. I went to lunch and ate Indian food as the owner chewed out the guard for some real or imagine slight. I went to the Trade Fair and remembered why I don’t like crowds, especially crowds of children. The minibus mate tried to weasel an extra 10 kwacha out of me, and when I looked bored and unruffled, he told me he would forgive me this time. Thank you, I forgive you too, I said. For what, he asked. For trying to cheat me on my birthday, I said. I read a handful of birthday wishes sent via email. I went home, watched a movie, cursed my cell provider for cutting out. I went for dinner with two women I’ve known for two weeks, but who’ve become friends nonetheless. Then we went to a bar where the music was lame and the men were lecherous. I went to bed and woke up the next morning feeling no different: not older, not wiser, not any less depressed by the idea of 30.
In the past week, one man I interviewed asked if writing my story was part of a school project and someone else guessed I was turning 25 when I told him it was my birthday. Back in the day, when I had just turned legal and would seethe when anyone asked to see my ID, people – smug, vain, older people – would say: “One day you’ll appreciate that.” Sadly, that day has finally come.
I might say I was lucky, at 30, to be living a life that makes me content. There are very few people in their 20s who want something as intangible as satisfaction by 30, but I feel in lots of ways that I am living a life that satisfies me – something that is far more important to me now, at 30, than being famous or married or rich. I look at friends who have chosen the more conventional path – the kind I always scripted for Barbie – and are miserable with it.
Still, I am alone and as I turn 30, it weighs on me more and more. I guess you could say I’m growing up.
-30-
Life
Every experience under the sun
Karen Palmer
806 words
2 May 2006
The Toronto Star
ONT
D03
English
Copyright (c) 2006 The Toronto Star
KIGALI, Rwanda -- There is a certain exhilarating energy to an Africa bus stand.
It is manic, confusing, chaotic and overcrowded, the vans lined up nose-to-nose in a haphazard way while dozens of boys in plastic sandals and 50 Cent T-shirts bark out strange place names and try with feigned urgency and real competitiveness to steer you toward their minibus.
There is the inevitable give-and-take about the fare, accompanied by many exclamations of "In the name of Jesus, sister! Amen!" and a second round of negotiations about that hefty bag on your back.
There is the patient or not-so-patient wait while the bus fills, squeezing in 20 where 15 would sit comfortably.
Then a delay, another delay, a start of the engine, a blaring of the radio - brassy Congolese, American rap or hip hop in an unrecognizable language - a small shift forward, a sputtering of the engine.
Through the windows, boys and girls sell glucose biscuits, sugary Fanta soft drinks, bottles of cold water, boiled eggs with salt and piri piri sauce, tiny sweet bananas, oranges that are actually green, sticks of roasted goat meat, greasy samosas from a giant tub.
And once underway, there may be a sales pitch for aphrodisiacs or a sermon ("In the name of Jesus, my sister! Amen!") or a Nigerian film playing loud enough to be heard in Nigeria.
There is always a breathtaking landscape dotted with tiny homes and cheering, waving children.
Inside the bus there are curious questions: Where are you from? What are you doing here? Where is your husband? How do you find our food, our country, our people?
There is usually a test of your knowledge of the local dialect; a pass is rewarded with delighted giggles. There are the insightful conversations about politics and development, the back-and-forth about hopes for the country. Then the shy declarations of the secret wish for more education, to one day see Canada.
At your destination, there is the budget hotel, costing anywhere from a dollar to $15 a night and described variously as a brothel, only for the desperately downtrodden or, hopefully, friendly, well-kept and clean.
On good nights, there is the sound of chirruping crickets, the buzz of motorbikes, the soccer fans down at the drinking spot cheering Arsenal or Man U or Chelsea.
On bad mornings, there is no power and only a bucket and a plastic cup for a shower.
On the streets there are wide-eyed children, some tied to their mother's back, others peering out from behind her skirt with broad smiles or looks of astonishment or fear.
Some are even bold enough to try out their English, asking and answering their sole phrase: "How are you? I am fine! How are you? I am fine!"
The continent is too big, too varied to be summed up in words: there are camels and soldiers, deserts and jungles, gorillas and lions, mystics and juju masters, chapatis and cassava, Muslims and Christians, a jumble of vibrant colours and masses of people.
There is a constant sense of struggle, endless sources of frustration, frequent assaults on the senses, brilliant scenes of innovation and resilience, heartbreaking displays of humanity, enough injustices to challenge a traveller's principles, sensibilities and long-held beliefs.
Travelling in Africa is not for the timid: you have to put yourself out there to get the most out of it. It requires equal parts compassion, patience and humour and will often reveal more about you than it will itself.
As aviator Beryl Markham wrote in her 1942 autobiography West With The Night:
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is still the host of all my darkest fears, the cradle of mysteries always intriguing, but never wholly solved.
It is the remembrance of sunlight and green hills, cool water and the yellow warmth of bright mornings.
It is as ruthless as any sea, more uncompromising than its own deserts.
It is without temperance in its harshness or in its favours. It yields nothing, offering much to men of all races.
It is what you will and it withstands all interpretation. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home.'
It is all these things but one: it is never dull.
Karen Palmer is a former Star reporter who has moved to Africa.
posted by Palmer in Africa at 4:12 AM
2 Comments:
Karen,
Happy Birthday!! You are doing things most of us only dream of.. that's something to be very proud of.
Miss ya..
Yeah Palmer, we are doing the things that most people dream of. Sometimes it's really shitty and doing it alone is even harder.But you're actually doing it and that's something to be happy for. I feel for you being alone on your birthday, wish I had been there to take you out for some bum-shaking and cocktails. Miss you, come back to my side soon xxx
Post a Comment
<< Home