new things

Since the lull of the last post, a lot of things have happened. I went to Pre-Service Orientation near Philadelphia for a few days, where I was sequestered in a farm hotel and met a lot of interesting people (seriously, Americorps folks are some good humans), and I started work at the Millvale Community Library, which has been a total whirlwind of meetings and new people and wrapping my head around things.

My work as a VISTA is going to be very different from anything I’ve ever done before. “Capacity building” in this case means that I’m sort of evaluating something that currently doesn’t have much structure (the way that the library works with volunteers) and creating a structure around it. While I have supervisors, this is the most independent work I’ve ever done, and also potentially some of the most impactful. My first week was really hard for this reason, because it felt like a lot of expectations without a lot of supervision. But this week I feel like I’ve really gotten my bearings and set up some goals and projects for myself.

The library is a really adorable and cool place. It’s a lot of amazing things packed into a small space. MCL isn’t a traditional library. It’s independent, meaning that a few community members were like “our town needs a library” and they worked really hard, secured the funding, and made it happen. They’re working on connecting the library to the Allegheny County system, which will mean some more consistent funding, but as of now it’s not part of any library systems. It’s also almost entirely volunteer-driven. They have one paid staff member but run a TON of programming, which is why having a structure around volunteering and someone to supervise volunteers (me) will be very beneficial. Their focus right now is on children’s programming, including traditional literacy-based events as well as things like bi-weekly tutoring, and “Maker Camp,” in which kids learn awesome crafting and tech skills. Like this week and next, the kids in Maker Camp are going to a local center for craft to learn woodworking and metalworking skills. The library is also expanding a lot of teen programming and exploring ways to expand adult programming, which is limited right now.

The other focus the library has is on sustainability. When I was trying to research the library, I was a little confused by this because it’s not something you really associate with libraries (at least as a main focus). The library is the nexus of something called the “Millvale Ecodistrict Plan.” People from the library and the borough did a needs assessment and determined three primary focuses for new community development: food, water, and energy. Food seems to be the priority right now. Millvale is a food desert, meaning there are no accessible grocery stores in the community. About a quarter of the community is also below the poverty line, which really makes it difficult to access nutritious food. As of now, there’s a really amazing program called Farm Truck Foods that swings around once a week to sell local organic produce, which I think is amazing. But for the long term, Farm Truck Foods is actually planning on setting up a hub in Millvale where they will sell nutritious local food several days a week, which will be excellent for the community. The library also works on food security through its own backyard community garden and a close partnership with the community gardens of Millvale, which I will also be coordinating volunteers for. The gardens are really impressive and I’m so excited to be involved with this work, as it was something I always thought was really cool at Warren Wilson but was on the periphery of, since my work focused mostly on youth.

The water aspect of the Ecodistrict plan is not what you would think. Millvale is a riverfront town, but you wouldn’t really know it. There are some scary highway on and off-ramps that separate Millvale from its riverfront park, and like no crosswalks, so people are working on making the Allegheny more accessible to residents. As for the energy component, the library is serving as a model in sustainable energy for the community. The building is entirely solar-powered, including the upstairs apartments. The panels generate so much energy that the library actually gets paid by Duquesne Light because they produce a surplus that goes back into the grid. I didn’t know that was possible! They’re hoping to be a solar energy resource for the community and to help other people get into sustainable energy, which is awesome.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying myself so far. I feel like I’m doing good work with good people and things are looking up.

After the 4-year liminal stage is a shorter one while I wait to start work, move out, and have the money to do what I want to. I wish I made better use of these periods in life rather than just killing time, but when I don’t have a big purpose driving me forward I seem to just stall.

boomerang town

The rivers run through my city
past the empty warehouses, broken windows like eyes on your back,
past cyclists bouncing over shifts in the concrete.
They run under rusting metal bridges, hot in the sun,
under the boats where the affluent drink their beers
on the weekends. The rivers merge
like crowds on the sidewalks. They split off,
diverge into small streams
where children catch crayfish.
The rivers run backward, like the glistening people
in the gyms on their ellipticals who overlook the streets.
Elliptical: the rivers are running in circles like
some of us—frantic, finding ourselves
back where we started. Back in the city
rivers run through.

thoughts on marriage equality

(Pretend it’s still yesterday.)

I wonder what this day will be called in history. Particularly thinking of queer couples I know with children and how they’ve fought for this, I’m so excited. I can only imagine the relief people are feeling. And while I totally agree that there are more pressing issues for the LGBT+ community than marriage equality (like homelessness, high suicide rates, and violence, particularly against trans WoC), I think/hope that this ruling is going to provide a legal basis for more anti-discrimination laws around sexual orientation and gender. Logically, if queer couples cannot be discriminated against on the marriage front, they should not be able to be discriminated against in other areas. And if this decision was left up to the states, we would still end up with states where the queer community is treated as second-class in terms of marriage, and it’s unlikely that in those places there would be any protective measures for LGBT+ individuals. Now that we have a national precedent that places all sexual orientations on the same level in terms of marriage, the road is paved for doing something similar with anti-discrimination laws. Anyway though, time to keep on keeping on. Passing legislation is really only a chunk of the battle–the much more difficult part is changing hearts and minds on this issue.

i’ll see you next season

we stand in that small lake where the fish gather round
our browned legs after a rain, sun glistening through green-filter
trees, clouds a painted backdrop for some dreamy high school play.
you put your arm around me, pull me close. the fish drift away from us.
aloe and wheatgrass cool my throat. i am killing time, pretending
that it’s any summer day, pretending that i’ve come for a visit
to your yellow house and we have the spare hours to take a hint
from the mellow fish and swim to the dock.
we could lie there all afternoon watching
the lightshow in the leaves above us.
my keys are glinting in the sunlight. i feel the weight
of the hundreds of miles i have to drive.
i ignore them a few precious moments more.

the class of 2015 is cute

pgh plans

This is my tentative list of plans for this year–where I will be and activities/organizations I want to get involved with. Organizing life this way is kind of super satisfying.

Job – Volunteer Coordination VISTA at Millvale Community Library
Housing – TBD but ideally a cute place with Susanna that has hardwood floors, good lighting, and is on a bunch of bus lines.
Dance – Bellydance at 3rd Street Gallery and/or Lawrenceville with Colleen Wilde, Hip Hop and Modern classes at Millennium Dance Complex
Yoga – Yoga Flow in Shadyside probably
Anti-Racism – Definitely want to get involved with What’s Up Pittsburgh.
Spiritual Community – Also TBD, gotta do more research on this.
Education – I’m going to try to audit Swahili and or Yoruba classes at Pitt! We’ll see about that.

I’m also taking the GRE and applying to grad school and I’m probably not going to have a car, so this is probably more things than I’m actually going to do. But having options is always a good thing.

moments from my last days

     
  

These are some pictures of mountains, very important inspirational women who changed my life, and me receiving my very expensive piece of paper which ultimately doesn’t mean that much until I go to graduate school but has sentimental value nonetheless. It’s sitting next to me on this desk.

A few days before graduation, I made an anthropology-nerd Facebook status about how excited I was for the reintegration ritual at the end of my rite of passage. And it was meant to be funny, but that really is the appeal of graduation. About rites of passage: they all have three stages. In the separation period, you are stripped of your former social statuses and separated from your social group. In the liminal phase, you are in-between social statuses and have to undergo a series of challenges. When you’ve done that, you go through a reintegration ritual and are welcomed back into the social group with a new and higher social status than you had originally.

We don’t have a lot of real rites of passage in our society. Instead, we have series of small tasks that gradually increase a person’s status, and people can opt to complete these tasks or not (like getting a driver’s license). A lot of social theorists have speculated that the lack of rites of passage in our society contributes to a lot of our social issues and certainly a general sense of confusion among millennials about our place, because there’s never a sense of having “arrived” at a new and respected social status, instead you just feel like you’re going through trial after trial and never coming to a sense of real adulthood.

All this to say, I recognize that bachelor’s degrees are the new high school diploma, etc. But for a moment on graduation day, I felt like this was it: I’d really done something challenging and was entering a new phase of life. I love that elements of the graduation ritual are so archaic, because I so crave the sense that I am part of something that goes back centuries. And the most profound moment of graduation is not when we got our diplomas, but when we processed out after the cap toss and traveled through a tunnel of all of our professors and supervisors–the people who had supported and encouraged us for the last few years–and they were clapping and smiling, saying our names. And you emerge through the tunnel and you’re “one of them” (I know, not really, but that’s how it felt) and they’re so happy you made it and happy to welcome you into the fold.

I have a lot more work ahead of me before I can do what I really want to in the world. But I’m also grateful for the experiences I’ve had these last four years and I’m proud of myself for what I’ve accomplished so far.

relief and that summer emptiness

   

Circus came and went and was fantastic. I’d been anticipating it literally all year, so this past week has been quite a let-down. Though I know I can have other performance opportunities in the future if that’s what I want, there’s nothing quite like performing in front of all of the people in your immediate community and receiving their support.

Today I decided that I’m not staying in Asheville after I graduate. I was in the process of applying for an Americorps VISTA position in the office where I work now, but I’ve ultimately decided that I would feel incredibly stagnant and claustrophobic if I chose to effectively return to college two months after graduation. So I’m relieved that the option is off the table, but also grappling with feelings of intense sadness that this is really it. Which is odd, because I’ve wanted to be out of here for quite some time. I just don’t do very well with change, and I’m having a hard time dealing with the fact that I won’t see Leo for a long time. I’m also worried about finding a new community at home and making good friends.

seeds

I’ve wanted to start a new WordPress for a while. I used to write on amandaleee before I discovered Tumblr. Tumblr is great because a lot of my friends are on it, and for a while it felt like I was cultivating a little garden of things I found beautiful or inspiring or funny. But then it no longer felt like a space where I could share my own thoughts in long-form: who would pause their scrolling long enough to read them? So I’m making this blog to get those thoughts out in the world and hopefully a few people I care about will read them.

I chose ‘mpanzi’ because I miss East Africa and I’m trying to keep Swahili alive in my head until I can go back, or at least move home to Pittsburgh where I can take more classes. Mpanzi  means ‘sower of seeds,’ a concept that has been formulating in my mind as I reflect on my experiences in college and think about what I want to do with my life going forward. In the past two years especially, I’ve felt really underconfident in my ability to make tangible change at the world, particularly around issues of race and class. I’ve had a few seriously rattling experiences as I’ve confronted the ignorance that exists about the systemic nature of these issues. It’s so strange to spend most of your time studying things like critical race theory, delving deeper and deeper into inequality, and then resurfacing to find people who have no idea that these inequalities even exist. I really want to help people see what’s actually happening. A tangible way I could do that is to become  a sociology or anthropology teacher, but that possibility is many years of graduate school away. One thing I can do in the meantime is sow seeds in peoples minds. I’ve been learning a lot about empathy and dialogue, and these are skills I need to develop. I want to have more conversations with people where I listen and speak my piece and sow these seeds.

Everything is exhausting and exhilarating. I am finishing my classes and applying for things and bellydancing and singing in the WWC Circus. I’m trying to decide whether to work here or go home and crying a lot about not seeing Leo all summer. I’m really ready to be home for a while, certainly. I miss my friends and my dogs and I’m just waiting for the day I can exhale and be alone for a little while.