so apparently i have a blog …
there is much to update you on re: my life over the past 10+ months … but i don’t have time to bother with all that nonsense … so you are just going to have to settle for opening the book at chapter 8, and trust that the crucial details will make themselves obvious …
i am sitting in “Acro Cyber Cafe” … in “Adam’s Arcade” … just off Ngong Road in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa … i am absolutely certain as to why I am in all of these places, except for “Nairobi,” “Kenya” and “Africa” … which has be a little dumbfounded … i have tried shaking myself awake, and even had a go at the old “pinch the cheek” approach, before resorting to the “back and forth face slap” … none of which resulted in me NOT being in Nairobi, Kenya … so i must conclude that I am in fact there … though i have not the slightest idea how that happened …
long distance travel has rapidly become one of my favorite activities … it’s bloody miserable, don’t get me wrong … but that sort of delerium that sets in when you completely lose touch with what day and time it is … or when you were last asleep … or even if you were last asleep … and whether that last thing you ate was breakfast or supper or some kind of crazy 3:00am meal that they only serve on airplanes … is a bit of a mind f**k, and i am such a big fan of mind f**k’s, that if they started a band and went on tour, i would give up my life, buy a grateful dead t-shirt, and become their star roadie …
had an 8 hour stopover in amsterdam, so went out to check out the city for a few hours … that was fun … i think …
i arrived in Nairobi at something like 7:00am, greeted by the smiling face of an old friend …
Top 5 best sights in the world:
1. smiling faces of old friends
2. i am too lazy to finish this list
Kimutai is an amazing fellow, who, after giving me food and a place to sleep off the jet lag, promptly took me out for about 6 liters of beer and a kilogram of roasted meat … we sat in a small little cafe of sorts for quite a lot of hours … laughing and all that wonderful stuff … this cafe was no different than any of the thousands that litter the streets of Africa’s cities, with white, plastic lawn chairs … western r+b and african “country” music blaring … and bathrooms that can only be appropriately defined as ‘damp’ …quite nice really …
in the hours i sat there, i was fortunate to meet a handful of very cool Kenyans … there was Allistair … who studied computer science at the U of A, and now ran his own company … there was a girl … who studied medicine at John’s Hopkins, and was now studying Law at the Univerisity of Nairobi … there was Theuri … who attended university in upstate New York, and received a fellowship to research community health at U of C San Francisco … and finally, there was NgaNga … who studied something I have forgotten at the University of Leeds …we had some great conversations, them and I … about peace and life and ideas …
it’s funny, you know … i have spent my share of time with “development” types … i am speaking of white westerners with big hearts who want to ’save africa’ … they are wonderful people … truly, and i admire so much of what so many of them do … but still, we are racist … so terribly, terribly racist, and to escape the mindset that says “we know better, so let’s help fix them” is a near impossibility …
because really … we don’t know better … and we need to stop trying to fix them …of course, we can help them … because that is how a person should behave towards a brother or a sister in need … we should help them in every way we can … but there is a line between “empowering” and “directing” that, from what i can tell, virtually every western NGO seems to misunderstand … i called it racism earlier, and this is exactly what i think it is … of course, none of these people would openly admit to racism … they are, afterall, the very people who dedicate their lives to helping people of different races … but when one approaches another culture with the point of view that “i know better, and this is what you need to do to be better” … can it be called anything else ??? … the tragedy is that even organizations like Youth Challenge International, with whom i will be working for the next month … who put such a profound emphasis on ‘developing partnerships with local organizations’ … still must abide by a set of government imposed guidelines that say ‘if you want our money, these are the things you need to do’ …
and not only do they need to do them, but they need to be able to provide evidence that they have successfully created some outcome in the communities in which they are working … outcomes, as far as i can tell, can be defined as “changing them to be more like us” … which doesn’t sound racist to me at all …
it’s tragic really, because when you meet people like those bio’d above … and hear their stories and thoughts and ideas … you know deeply that the future of this continent is in the hands of an increasingly intelligent and talented group of young adults … i can only imagine what kind of incredible, uniquely african, world these people could create, if only they weren’t forced to work within a framework that is, in every possible way … not their own … i can only imagine what Africa could become if, for once, white people would get over themselves …
for my part, i plan to f**k s**t up as much as possible over the next month … seizing every possible opportunity to be a pain in the ass by not doing anything that can be better done by locals …
oh, one last thing before i go … having consumed 6 literes of beer … i promptly fell into an enormously gratifying slumber … for about an hour … before spending the remainder of the night in a feverish, shivering sweat … with a pounding head and stiff limbs … and vomiting my stomach dry so many times that i was a little worried about death by dehydration …
welcome to nairobi !!
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Landmark Forums, Life, Nairobi, Past, Possibility
sooo … now i am in nairobi …
a good friend of mine told me once about the landmark forum and how it changed his life … in canada it costs between $500 and $600, and i don’t think i was ever able to justify the cost … so i forgot …
one of the people who i did the meditation with a few months back, who had found a lot of success in things i wanted to move my life towards, advised me to do it as well … he told me that it was in kenya as well and for about $100 … with no excuses … i came …
and wow …
it is kind of like a motivational speaker in high school … except not at all … and kind of like the buddhist meditation … except not at all … so really … it’s unlike anything i have ever seen … though i imagine tony robbins to have a similar impact …
for 3 long days, a leader guides a large group through a logical progression aimed at understanding the impact of the past on the future … the goal is to create the possibility in each participant of overcoming their pasts in order to create happier, more powerful futures … of living the lives we choose instead of the lives we are trapped in … and it works … it really does …
young men stand at the front of the room and through tears confront their animosity towards their fathers … young women confront their failures as wives … older women acknowledge their weakness in motherhood … older men confess to affairs and lies which have destroyed their marriages … women stand up and share stories of rape buried for decades …
the leader, a professional life coach and mental health professional … guides, comforts, challenges and confronts each one … each one comes to the eventual realization of how they themselves are responsible for their own unhappiness … each one makes life changing phone calls and returns with more tears speaking of happiness and freedom they have never known before …
do i agree with everything it says ??? … of course not … my psychology education tells me that there is much over-simplification … but it would be criminal to throw out the baby …
did i have a breakthrough in my life ??? … unquestionably … my problems seem petty compared with those i witnessed my new friends grappling with … but they are my problems … it is my life … and i really do feel it will never be the same …
i am inauthentic …
i present myself as something i am not so that people will like me …
i have a compulsion with winning and always being right …
i let my mis-interpretation of events from the distant past shape the way i live (and don’t live) my life …
i am terrified of what other people think …
i am a drug addict, terrified of intimacy and crippled by a fear of rejection …
i am a bad listener, a worse communicator and in my need to win, make sure those around me lose so often that i unconsciously weaken them …
at least i was … i have now created the possibility for myself and for my life of being a person of integrity … of being authentic and genuine in all that i do … of being vulnerable in my relationships and willing to lose so that others may win … of REALLY listening to others … of being in control of my addictions, my relationships and my fears … of being as great and profound and inspiring as i have always known i could be … and to be so THROUGH humility itself …
last night i walked up to one of the most beautiful women i have ever seen in my life and asked her out … in a million years i would never have done this … she would have laughed at me … she would have rejected me … she could never possibly like me …
i made no excuses … no caveats … no “it’s ok if you say no”s … i just looked her in the eyes … smiled … and asked …
she was surprised that i would actually want to go out with her …
she said yes …
my life will never be the same again …
peace and love from nairobi …
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Blind Melon, Dhamma, Happiness, Liberation, Meditation, Misery, Pain, Peace, Silence, Vipassana, Wisdom
I don’t feel the suns comin’ out today
its staying in, its gonna find another way.
As I sit here in this misery, I don’t
think I’ll ever see the sun from here.
And oh as I fade away,
they’ll all look at me and say, and they’ll say,
Hey look at him! I’ll never live that way.
But that’s okay
they’re just afraid to change.
oooooook … this is another one of those impossible to create posts, as to encapsulate the experience that was in a reasonable number of words is impossible …
yesterday, for example, i wrote 37 pages in my journal, and that was just a gloss over …
it turns out silence isn’t challenging … that’s “noble” silence, which is to say that you do not communicate with anyone in anyway whatsoever … when everyone around you is doing it, and you are segregated from the women … easy …
the diet was not challenging either … oatmeal and bread for breakfast, and only 2 pieces of fruit for supper is actually a nice balance to the day …
even the lack of ANY stimulation was not hard … i did not miss tv, music, books … though i did miss my journal …
what was hard ??? … what made it THE, NUMBER ONE … most difficult experience of my life … (not in the same sense as sudan was difficult, but in the way running a marathon would be difficult) …
11 hours a day of meditation …
11 hours a day of sitting on the floor … from 4:30am to 6:30 am … from 8:00am to 11:00am … from 1:00pm to 5:00pm (4 hours straight) … from 6:00pm to 9:00pm with a 1 hour discourse in the middle …
the pain … THE PAIN … the knees, the back, the legs, the shoulders … the pain, the pain, the pain …
the boredom … again and again and again … 33 hours of JUST being aware of the natural breath … 6 days of scanning every single spot on the body (yes, every single spot you pervs 
) … again and again and again …
was it worth it ???
a million, million times over … in fact … i would recommend to anyone and everyone who wishes for REAL personal development that you MUST do it …
beyond personal knowledge … the development of the skills of the mind is astounding … when i started, my mind would wander constantly … this is just the nature of the mind … every 30 seconds it would jump off into the past or the future … but day after day of focus … i can now focus on a single train of thought for more than half an hour … the level of depth and clarity and focus i am now capable of is actually somewhat frightening …
anyway … Buddha teaches that there are 3 kinds of knowledge … that which you are told, that which you understand intellectually, and that which you have direct personal experience with … in order for real impact, you must experience it for yourself … and it is SO true …
those who know me know that i am a pretty easy-going, peaceful person … this is now on an entirely different level … every trace of negativity has left me … i feel nothing but harmony and love for the world and everything in it …
i will try to explain this in broad strokes, though i will do it a great disservice by over-simplifying … first of all … i am not a buddhist … this course makes no effort to convert … it is outside the realm of religion and deals with universal issues … namely … the cure for suffering and misery … and the path to enlightenment … which is found entirely within the body and needs to external religion at all …
buddha figured out 2500 years ago that suffering is universal … we all have negativity in us … he found that all suffering can trace back to craving … we crave something … that craving is realized, and then we either crave more or we crave something greater, and there is misery … or the craving is not realized and we suffer for what we did not receive … i didn’t buy this at first, but after hundreds of hours of self-observation, i believe it to be true …
buddha found by sitting and watching his body, that every sensation he had … something he saw or heard, or something he thought, created a sensation on the body … when you feel a strong emotion, you feel it physically right? anger and love? this is true for even small reactions, you just have to REALLY be paying attention to feel it …
so the first key is to observe body sensations … the second key is to remain neutral … to observe them objectively … when you react to a positive sensation with positivity, you crave it … when you react to a negative sensation with negativity, you feel aversion to it (crave to have it removed) …
the principle that brings the two together is the universal law of nature, that change is constant and universal … everything in existence shares the feature of arising and passing away …
sooo you sit and hour after hour you observe body reactions … head to toe, toe to head, head to toe, toe to head … all day every day … you are forced to sit in one position for hours on end and not allowed to move … and the pain is excruciating … impossible to bear … but you do not react to it … you examine each square inch of your throbbing knee and say “oh, that’s interesting, there is pain … i will watch it and see what happens” …
then … one day i am scanning my body, trying to cope with the pain and i notice that if i examine my knees, the greatest pain is in one specific spot on my right knee … 5 minutes later i come back and almost fall over when i realize the pain is gone from that spot … the pain is now on the other knee in a different spot … it has changed … everything changes … if i had reacted with negativity to the pain the first time, it would have been for nothing, as the pain was temporary … and i would feel worse for having done so …
all you need to do … with any sensation … is watch it … observe it … and NOT react …
now there is no pain … i can sit for 2 hours without moving and not feel pain … now there is no boredom … i can feel bored, say to myself “this too will change” … and sure enough, half an hour later i realize the boredom left …
and since every craving is a sensation, it works with EVERY craving … i feel aversion towards a person, i say to myself “this is a sensation, it is temporary, and it will pass” … and almost instantly, what would have left ME feeling negative (me … NOT the other person) … now has me utterly content … i can walk into stores, feel the urge to buy things … say to myself ‘this is a craving, it will pass’ … and … it passes … and i walk away content …
i have never felt so liberated … i have never felt so free … i have never felt so happy …
the worst part is … this whole concept is something i UNDERSTOOD intellectually before … i knew it … just as you may be saying to yourself now “oh yeah, that makes sense, i get it” …
but you MUST experience it … it must be made real to have a real impact on your well-being …
and this is really just the main message of wisdom … of which there are dozens …
like the importance of the present … what is is, and what is not is not … this is simple basic reality … so there is no sense in bothering about that which is not, whether past or future … this is a waste of energy and leads to craving and negativity … instead, one can only make the best of that which is, and in doing so, create positivity in what will be, because change is universal …
or the truth that all negativity felt towards others is really all about ourselves … all negative emotions are our own … when i dislike somebody, there is nothing wrong with that person … the problem is entirely within me … and must be approached as such …
and on a more hard to understand level … when you stop having new reactions to sensations, all the old complexes from the past start to creep to the surface, and are washed away one by one … i had memories of times in my childhood and youth … low times in my life … times that were still exerting a negative influence on everything in my life … i am now at peace with all these times, and all the people in them to whom, 15 days ago, i still felt negativity … (and again … this negativity was all about ME … and was only hurting ME) …
and on a cooler level … i can now feel every single sensation on my body and feel a wonderful flow of energy flow over the entire surface of me … which is the baseline sensation/vibration and is the manifestation of change …
sooo … it was amazing … ups and downs and finally peaceful serenity … i am more clear and determined on my path than i have ever been before, and i can’t wait to get back to canada to launch the next phase of my life …
“Strive ardently, and burn, oh man. Purity comes from burning away the dross. Gold must pass through a crucible to be refined”
on the day when silence was broken and suddenly we could all communicate again, there were 2 shared expeirences … 1. EVERYONE first talked about how hard it was, how bad the pain and boredom were .. but EVERYONE said it was incredible … 2. everyone had their own experience … what you have read above is mine … but this is a deep examination of self … and the beauty of the silence is that there is NO shared experience … what you go through is your own and only your own … so what you need … you will find …
again … these courses happen all over the world … i can not recommend strongly enough … i have never felt so happy, i have never felt so alive, and i know that there is no craving or pain which can overcome me … http://www.dhamma.org/
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Elephants, Hell's Gate, Maasi Mara, Safari, Vipassana Meditation, Water Development
alll right … this has got to be fast (again … sorry …)
i went on safari … it cost a lot … it was worth it in some ways … not so much in others …
the first evening we arrived we went on a evening game drive as the sun was going down over Maasi Mara (connected to the Serengeti) … there are animals EVERYWHERE … and there is something overwhelmingly tranquil and beautiful about driving into the middle of a herd of 50-100 ‘deer’ (impala, gazelle, heartebeast, etc, etc, etc … there are prolly 10 types of deer like animals out there), shutting off the engine, and just being with them while they eat and graze and wag their little tails …
the hi-light of the evening … which turned out to be the hi-light of my whole trip, was when we found a herd of about 30 elephants … again … just sitting and being with them as they go about their day to day … was … magical … somehow they seem wiser than other animals … you look in their eyes from 10 feet away and you really get they feeling they are looking back at you, and that they understand … wow …
b/c my tour company were a bunch of lying bastards … i ended up doing the full drive around Maasi Mara (i don’t even know how to spell that, how embarassing) … twice … which had its highs and its lows … i saw about 10,000 zebras … which was pretty cool … saw a pack of lions feeding on a buffalo … which was pretty cool (though not as impressive as the elephants) … was made fun of by a baboon and sat about 3 feet from a baby monkey … which was probably the 2nd hi-light of my trip … people who deny that humans are evolved from a similar ancestor as primates need to seriously consider opening their eyes a little bit … in my opinion …
so it was good … but worth $450 ??? … not so much … you reach a point where you are like “oh look, ANOTHER giraffe … just like the last 50″ …
i was supposed to visit a water development project on the weekend, but it got bumped to monday, so i stopped in Naivasha and Hells Gate National Park for about 24 hours instead … it cost only $20 and was freaking incredible … you can just walk around … by yourself … in a park filled with wild animals … zebras and warthogs and leopards and cheetahs … there is nothing in the world quite like walking over a rise at 7am, and finding a family of 5 warthogs 10 feet away … my mind flashes back to ‘lord of the flies’ and i am not sure if i should be afraid or in awe …
they decide for me, and take off running … so i round the next bend, and the tree i walk past turns out to be a tree … like the tree next to it … but the tree next to IT … is a giraffe … and he takes off running too … sending about 5 others all around me who i didn’t even notice into a sprint … so cool …
i was a moron though … and decided that, since i was out there at 6:00 am … i would walk the longest circuit … i was about half way through it when i did a little mental math and realized that in 4 hours i was going to be late getting back to my lodge, so late getting to naivahsa, so late getting to nairobi … and late in nairobi means a $10 cab ride instead of a $0.33 bus ride … so i walked as fast as i possibly could for about 4 hours straight … all in all, in 8 hours in the park i walked 39km … plus 4km there and 4km back from my lodge … i have never been so tired in my life …
like clockwork though, i arrived back at my hostel in nairobi JUST as supper was being served … it’s nice when things work out …
monday i went to a place called kisasi … where 24,000 people have no reliable access to water, so for 6 months of the year are forced to walk for hours to dig holes in the sand, which are subsequently shat in by all manner of animals, to collect water and then walk hours back … they need $500,000 … that seems like a big number … great people though …
now i am about to disappear for 10 days … everyone i tell about this thinks i’m crazy, so that fact that i think it sounds amazing makes me almost certain i am crazy … i think spending 10 days meditating, not communicating with anyone in any way, with no distractions what so ever seems like a bloody amazing way to learn about myself …
to each their own i guess … so i will be back again on the 29th … and hopefully i won’t be schizophrenic by then … then i am back for a couple days to take care of odds and ends, then i am going to visit an orphanage south of nairobi and a youth centre east of nairboi (maybe) … and then am off to uganda … can’t wait …
Filed under: Kenya
a public service announcement …
if you ever need a water purifier … get STERIpen … its a little light you shine in the water and it treats it instantly and easily …
i was putting mine to great use until it broke in Sudan … the wonderful people at STERIpen and Ram Mountaineering in Cape Town, South Africa have gone a MILE out of their way to help me out …
they will save me literally hundreds of dollars that i otherwise would have spent on bottled water … and bottled water is f**king evil and we should all be ashamed of ourselves …
anyway …
this place is barack-crazy …
yesterday i heard a song on the bus … called “Barack, Barack, Barack” … that had kind of a poppy beat, with lyrics sung reggae … but all the worlds were about his policies …
“barack, barack, he won’t cut and run … barack, barack, he supports a reasonable timetable for troop withdrawl … barack, barack, on immigration he feels ………….”
weird …
and also … kenyan men LOVE business casual … ever single man i see, rich or poor, is wearing dress pants and a dress shirt … i am the most underdressed person at the party …
i am just chilling out, waiting to go on a bloody expensive safari … for this price … i better see some animals killing each other … or at least lions feeding with the blood all over their faces or something … i also want to get charged by a rhino … have you ever SEEN a rhino … they are like a bulldog, with a bigass horn that weighs (i just wrote “ways” … wtf?) a couple tonnes … i feel like if that doesn’t scare me, nothing will …
i am starting to figure out all the different ways they try to skim money from my pockets, and am getting better everyday at beating them to the punch …
gotta run … i just got called …
see ya’ll in a few days …
