This is a great adventure I am on. I realize this when I explain what I am doing in South Africa, and I watch my listeners’ eyes grow wide. “What about your family?” the women ask. “You’re in a good place,” the men say. My family is fine; and yes I am.

In fact, my husband just left a week ago, after visiting me for four days. We stuffed as much food and wine into the days and ourselves as we could manage. This country, the wines, the generosity of the people, the natural beauty, the warmth of temperature and personalities—all are so exceptional.

I play with the Afrikaans, photographing signs that seem to say what we all think.:

The interviews for my research yield surprising answers, which is good, since I’m supposed to be creating knowledge. So if we already knew this stuff, it wouldn’t be new. People say things, and I think, is that true? Is it true that the African concept of wealth is that it is limited, finite? This implies that when someone has more, then someone else has less, pays a price for the affluence of the other. This contrasts the Western notion of wealth as infinite, out there for the taking.

What is true is the fact that people feel betrayed by the current government. The ANC celebrated its 100^th anniversary in mid January and the country was not pleased with images of these men drinking champagne in one hand and lifting the raised fist in the other. They have spent too much money on themselves, and broken too many promises made during the campaigns.

In my research I’m wondering what happens when youth are given a place at the table in a deeply divided society? More and more societies are becoming deeply divided; think of our own—so would creating listening spaces for young people blur the dividing lines?

Define the divisions: racial, religious, socio-economic, educational. So we have blacks, and within that category there are ANC and PAC and Christians and Muslims. Then there are the so-called coloureds and Indians, a society that places education for their children at the top of a long list of priorities—these are also divided between Christian and Muslims, and along other lines. The whites, who are the English and Afrikaners. But the old faultlines of township people and non-township no longer apply as the “Black Diamonds,” or newly wealthy black members of society, now send their children to better schools. So are the schools where divisions are made and unmade?

I’m thinking that communities may be defined by the stories told. I’m thinking we would save ourselves a lot of trouble if we looked at individuals, instead of groups.

Today I read about a man called Power. He runs the local carwash. Yesterday my gas station attendant said, “Hi, I’m Clever.” I almost responded, “So am I,” when I caught sight of his name tag. After I tipped him R5 (50 euro cents) for filling up the car with petrol and checking the oil and water, I called out, “Thanks, Clever!” just because I’ve always wanted to put those two words together that way.

My talks grow in me. I interview professors at universities, students of all the above categories and all ages and all studies, people working at NGOs, scholars, researchers, taxi drivers, and neighbors.

Words bounce around my brain and I hardly know where to put them down. So I listen, and listen some more. What is not being said? Which question? This country is in transition, that’s for sure.

The Afrikaans says it all, embedded in the language itself is a description of the biggest trading partner, or new best friend of this South Africa: The way to say, “How are you my brother, you’re my mate” is Howzit my bru? You’re my China.

My last blog entry described my golf adventure during the final weeks I spent at St. Andrews. I write this entry from Cape Town. What happened between Scotland and South Africa? A summer and autumn in The Netherlands, catching up with friends and family after my 9-month stint in Scotland; then my dream job of teaching and researching and heading up the writing center at Webster University. The Fall semester grew and blossomed as I taught writing classes and International Relations classes. Most of my time became wrapped around lesson plans and papers in need of correction, midterms, final exams, and readings.

The great gift was the quality of my students (yet again) this term: courageous, hard-working, engaged, caring. They came from South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Asia. I’m still waiting for someone from Australia and Antarctica to show up; then I can claim all seven continents. We had heated discussions about everything under the sun: human rights, revolutions, theories—theirs and ours, wars—them and us. As in all great classes, I learned from them; and I hope they learned from me. I also had the privilege of coaching an amazing group of fiction writers. Their stories whirl around my head like the legs of an octopus, sucking me into plots and characters I care about and pulling me ever deeper.

As I taught, my PhD research kept calling to me: more books to buy and skim, more outlines, more emails, more lines of correlation, more wondering why.

And then it was over. I turned in the last grades and started packing for my field work in South Africa: 9 weeks of interviewing and collecting data on the role of young people in conflict and peacebuilding. I finally have a name for what I’m looking at—a deeply divided society. So I’ve been reading up on that and discovering that any answers I might find could help just about every society we live in, as we tend to be heading for deeper and more deeply divided societies.

My Egyptian student told me when I left, “Build a lot of peace.” I made the crucial mistake of telling my students I could be bribed with chocolate and alcohol. As a result, I received Christmas baskets full of goodies. I will see my students and colleagues at Webster again in mid-March, when I return to teach again.

Right now though, as at the beginning of all new dives, I’m just barely lowering myself down into the water. Did someone say something about a cage? Still, on that 11-hour flight from Amsterdam a few days ago, I wrote that my heart is humming at the adventure awaiting me. And I keep thinking about what it means to be a peacebuilder.

I’m staying in an apartment complex for staff at the University of Cape Town. I’m a visiting researcher, affiliated with the Children’s Institute here. I’ll also be working with the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.

My apartment nestles at the foot of Table Mountain, with Devil’s Peak looming out my back windows. I look out at the Rhodes Memorial, a Greek-columned tribute to a man who either built or tore down this corner of the continent, depending on the history book you read. (My IR students would tell you it’s all about perspectives.) This memorial is surrounded by savannah and forest, where zebra and wildebeest graze on the Rhodes Estate, just on the other side of the M3 highway. I like the way the cars and game act as if the other isn’t there.

Yesterday I went up to the restaurant beside the stone lions on the porticoed steps of the memorial and had a glass of sauvignon blanc (don’t get me started about South African wines) and watched the Cape Town view. I smelled the spindly pines and watched dappled light as the sun shifted. Southern skies: sun over the north instead of the south.

This is what my apartment complex looks like from there. Mine is the window in the triangle of shadow to the left, on the second floor.It’s 33 degrees today during the height of South Africa’s summer, with 20 mph winds gusting from the southeast. That’s Antarctica, so it’s a cool wind, but wild, and trees rock and bow at its force. They call this wind the “Cape Doctor” because it blows the smog out to sea. My apartment couldn’t be more different than my wee hoose in St. Monans. I’m in a big complex and I hear children laughing, adults calling to each other, and heavy traffic on the Main Road at the front of the building. During rush hour vans toot their horns and men call out the destinations of their taxis, car alarms go off, trucks rumble past and buses screech their brakes. I wake at 6 when the traffic gets too noisy, and rarely get to sleep before midnight because of the roar. That’s at the front. At the back I gaze at the mini-game preserve ala Cecil.

I brought 47 kg of luggage with me, 40 kg of which are books. What was I thinking? I look at them now, and realize I’m supposed to read them, read and digest them, read and write about them. So I sit here on the couch with my feet up on a pillow, the fan humming to my left, the wind whistling through the glass, smelling my vanilla candle, and think of my students, my family, my friends, and watch the South African light.

In Scotland the light shone thin and tenuous in the moist air. Here the light is no less extraordinary, but not thin—heavy, heavy with color and heat, as if at the tip-toe end of this mighty continent, the light has run out of breath. Still it is a fine light—heavy and fine like the strokes of a Dutch landscape painting. When I’m outside, the light and sun and wind caress my pasty North European skin. I eavesdrop on people talking more languages than I can count. There are eleven official languages alone here.

I’ve learned that a car hoots, traffic lights are robots, I need to tip petrol station attendants since I’m not supposed to fill the tank myself, to capture me is to take down my details, that it’s important to padlock the iron grill at my front door when I go to sleep (don’t worry-there’s 24-hour security, but still), to always give the mini-bus taxis right of way, that half a supermarket aisle can be devoted to braai (barbeque) materials, and to watch for the golden babies: children from mixed parents—something I didn’t see much of during the first of many visits to this place back in 1998.

You know what they call the generation born after the first free elections in 1994? Born Free.

In this place then, where my heart soars and my soul settles, I ring in the New Year, wish you all health and happiness, and christen this new season one of Hope.

I am back home. Scotland and the moist, northern light and ever-present sea and St Andrews and my wise, dear friends are there, and I am here, in klein kikkerland, or little frog country, as the Dutch call Holland. I stuffed my books into my car, drove four hours south through amazing beauty and the Scottish Borders–cattle on a thousand hills–sailed across the North Sea in a ferry from Newcastle to Ijmuiden, and was home. That’s me the day, they would have said in St Monans.

I fear my books have multiplied like rabbits in dark corners. As my car disgorged them, they quietly filled corners on all three floors of our house. They are there still, sagging in the plastic bags I had to pack them into when the cardboard boxes would not fit into my car. They have titles with words like peace and conflict and path.

The two weeks before I left were filled with playing golf. I played ten rounds of 18 holes in 14 days. And I got my handicap! But in the meantime, I memorized the wind and rain slapping my cheek and tearing my hair out of my visor. I recited the number of shots like a meditation as I watched the sun come and go, the sea turn from blue to gray, the gorse shine gold, and the far hills rise and fall.

And that’s where I got the idea of the zen of golf. I have learned many things during this year of being set apart for creativity and research. I have learned that one must let go to lay hold. That when we are afraid because we cannot control our world, then this fear is a friend because it signals the time to trust. I used to call them the foreign tribes of fear and think they had to be slain and banished from the land. Then I discovered fear as a friend, a warning system, a means of communication for my subconscious. How to befriend the foreign tribes? Sounds hauntingly close to International Relations. Listening, respect, trading stories, admiring each other’s children . . .

Some of you will know the motto of this season for me has been unexpected gifts at unexpected times. But to receive the gifts we must see them, anticipate them, trust in them. “I trust” are words like “I hope,” stabs in the dark that may just tear through the tapestry of terror to let the light in. I’m thinking Plato’s Cave here, which is another blog post all together.

What about the golf, you ask? Well just before I started playing my manic 180 holes in 14 days, I received my MA in International Relations. Somehow I managed to write a master’s thesis (they call it a dissertation in Scotland), and put together a research proposal for my PhD dissertation (they call it a thesis in Scotland). I don’t know how I did all that work. Dreading it in January, I remember calling my daughter and freaking. Now, looking back, all I can remember is sitting at my wee desk in my wee house in the wee fishing village of St Monans and watching the tide come in and go out as hours ticked by and pages were typed and books perused. Day after day after day. Until it was done. I woke every morning and thought, I trust. My friend and mentor here says this is a great gift. I agree.

In golf, there comes a moment during the swing when one must stop trying to control it, trust the muscle memory and surrender to the power as the head of the club smashes against the ball and sends it flying. The grip is important. My handicap-4 son tells me I need to keep my eye on the ball more.

In golf there are giant bunkers that swallow your ball. But you get down into the bunker, dig your feet into the sand, aim for an inch from the ball to dig it out, swing as fast and hard as you can and follow through, then do it over and over and over until the rescue is complete.

On golf courses there and here, I count up and down, walk up and down, swing up and down. It reminds me of the rhythm of the sea out my window in St Monans.

In golf a handicap is a good thing.

Now that I’m home, when I walk in my woods, I remember myself pre-Scotland, and see the memory of me in flat, sepia tones. But here I am in living color! The pending workload of continued research and reading and fieldwork, coupled with teaching would have terrified the old two-dimensional me. New me smiles softly and beckons.

“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”–Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

We drove beside snow-tipped mountains with waterfalls like tapped veins, gushing on all sides. Reddish heather and dark maroon moors flanked us. Ancient castles reared up on the unlikeliest of tiny islands, whispering of betrayal and long-lost love.

The wee inn pictured here met us at the end of a long and winding road. It was built in the 1700s and offered a view of the loch that shifted like a dream.

At some point the snow runoff and horizontal rain meant a road I meant to take looked more like a boat ramp. With flooding on both sides, we splashed our way onwards, as the climbing took us over the pass and that same afternoon we wandered in Edinburgh in 22-degree warmth.

“If you don’t like the weather in Scotland, wait five minutes,” one of our hosts told us.

Say these places out loud: Isle of Skye, Cairngorms, Inverness, Loch Awe, Stirling. A litany of locations, ancient and modern. We saw the bridge the Hogwarts Express travels over, oddly pleasing. Mist rose and fell, hills became mountains became moors became coastlands.

I thought, Is this the landscape of my heart?

The food! Banoffee pie, salmon served seven ways, scones with double cream and homemade strawberry jam, and my favorite: caramel and chocolate-covered shortbread, called shortcake. Oh yeah: a shiraz that haunts me still and don’t forget the gin and tonics!

But the best part was letting the land seep into my soul: the peace, the unexpected gifts at unexpected times, like the castle where we ate lunch and the waiter described his clientele as “brand new.” I thought he meant honeymooners and said, “Just married?” He laughed. “No, no, it’s Scottish, sorry. It means they’re the greatest.”

This poem by the Scottish poet of the month, echoes my own reaction to the stone and water I witnessed on this journey. And my title is taken from another modern Scottish poet, A.B. Jackson.

on the senses

little saints buried saints
finally kissed by the earth
lilies from your parched mouths
from your salt lips
rise white and tall
scented but with which world

tonight your funeral mass
is being chanted again
in the drowned city
its incense fills us
spume and lightning

Alasdair Paterson © on the governing of empires (Shearsman, 2010)

What’s a research proposal? Ten thousand words mapping out the next 2+ years of reading, writing, interviewing, analyzing, reading and writing 80,000 words (not including the bibliography, but including footnotes, but at this stage-hey! Who’s counting?) for my PhD thesis (UK)/dissertation (N. America).

Way back in October I wrote a blog entry hoping and trusting in a shaky way that this day would come. Now I have a roadmap. So if I deviate, at least I’ll know where I’ve deviated from. The general direction has become a bit more focussed: To go where no man has gone before, to explore new worlds. . . . Sorry, got carried away there.

My research will explore the place of voice–specifically young people’s–and its role in conflict and peacebuilding. And my case study is South Africa, where I’ll be visiting for two months in 2012. But I’ve also been interviewing NGOs and individuals involved in youth policy here in Scotland. Which brings me to my business cards. Monday there’s a conference here at St Andrews put together by my wise supervisor, on violence and circulation of children. And Wednesday I’m going to Edinburgh for an “event” about Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has become EU law. Article 12 is about the voices of children, and requires that children be consulted on decisions that affect their lives. So since I’m looking into how youth narratives can be used as tools for policy assessment and policy design, this is my kind of event. I hope to meet Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, who has called for widespread interviews among young people before determining future Scottish policy. The last time young people in Scotland were asked what was most important to them, was by the NGO Children 1st. The overwhelming response–surprising to the adults who run this world–asked for one thing. What was young people’s number-one priority? To spend more time with their parents. Hmm. Anyway, for these two events next week I needed business cards. As I told my husband, next week I’ll have to be smart and pretty. He told me I should go to bed early.

I think I’ve been spending too much time around my PhD colleagues. The other day I ran into one and immediately we started discussing the socio-economic ramifications of a social-constructivist epistemology. What were the ontological implications? Was this rooted in Aristotle or Plato? Hegel maybe, pre-Marxist, that is. And was it too early to go to the pub? Well, those of you who know and love me have probably realized I’ve always been a closet geek. What’s worse, I may now have become a recovering academic.

Ok, enough. Onto Life in Scotland news: I love living in a small fishing village. I’ve introduced you to Bob the postman, but have I told you about Peter? He works at the post office, and whereas I stand in line for whole half hours at the post office in St Andrews, when I go to the one in St Monans, Peter is often sitting with his feet up on the desk, waiting for the next customer. He works with the door open so he can look outside, across the harbor at the wide expanse of water to the other side of the firth. Every time he sees me, he says, “Hello, young lady.” Speaking as someone who’s turned 35 17 times, this is music to my ears. I eavesdropped once when another woman entered the post office to see if he says this to all the girls, but he didn’t. So I’m convinced he’s sincere. The other evening I was out for my daily walk along the harbor, when I found Peter sitting outside. “Look at that light,” he said. “Aye,” I nodded in my best imitation Scottish way.

And this brings me back to a previous Scotland theme: the light. These photos are of my favorite walk. It starts the moment I leave my little house. I close the door behind me and look up, and this is what I see.

I walk along the harbor and say, “Hiya,” to everyone. Did I mention that we don’t lock our doors in St Monans? Took some getting used to, until I had to go twice to the package center in the next town over after I missed shipments from my drug dealer (amazon.co.uk–free shipping in the UK!). I noticed that on sunny days some people simply left their front doors wide open. So I stopped locking mine and voila! I come home from a hard day listening to seminars and reading in the library to neat stacks of packages and boxes on my living room floor. Bob cometh, he leaveth and he goeth.

My walk winds up, past coves, and toward the Newark castle ruins, the origins of which date back to the mid 1200s.

Look at this stonework:

Heading back, this is the view:

The St Monans church, which was built in the 1300s, is still standing. In all the UK, this is the church located closest to the sea.

And when I come home, before opening my unlocked door, I turn once more, because the light, which is so unique here, I’m told, because of the angle of the sun when you’re this far north, often has one more surprise for me.

I watch the water and the sky here all the time. Can you see in this photo the snow-covered hills across the firth? That’s North Berwick on the other side. As I write this, its lights twinkle across the water in sunset like fairy promises.

In the mornings as I drive to school, the snow on the distant hills sketch an anti-shadow against the treeline. Mist rises and falls. I watch for birds of prey, my sea eagle Norbett, buzzards, which are like hawks, and wonder why I haven’t seen the first lambs of the season yet. In Holland they’d be bouncing straight-legged beside their mothers by now. But maybe it is because of the eagles, maybe the farmers here keep them indoors. Or maybe it’s because it still drops below freezing at night. On these drives I count the hillsides with centuries-old cascades of daffodils, and listen for brooks thick with the spring run-off, until the spires of St Andrews rise to meet me.

This place tells me, time comes and goes, like the sea, an ebb and flow of ideas not set in stone. What is 600 years?

To find out why Prince William and his lovely Kate Middleton visited St Andrews, read the BBC article here.

Some people had been waiting to see them since 7 a.m., waiting in the rain, I might add. I come strolling up and 15 minutes later, he’s shaking my hand.

There was a heavy police presence as they filmed us.

And I even spotted a few lookouts on the tower roof.

But as Will and his lovely Kate came toward me, I suddenly thought, I should stop taking photos and stick out my hand. So I did. And he took it. And he looked at me. And call me crazy, but what I saw in his eyes was that he cares. I had expected some politician’s hand pump, and a turning away, a wall even, glazed-over eyes, not connecting, shyness maybe. Instead, he cared. Maybe he was caring about his wife-to-be, hoping she doesn’t turn out like his mother. Maybe he’s so new to this he’s still moved by a crowd’s adoration, but I broke out into a grin and felt singled out, special even.

I know my Irish grandmother is turning in her grave that English royalty would have this effect on me. Plus I’m just not into the whole fame cult. But here was romance and tragedy and hope and youth and 600 years plus royalty, all wrapped up in one intriguing man.

Those of you who know me well will also know I’m a shameless eavesdropper. And the invention of the mobile phone has been a great boon for people like me. I have overheard the most intimate of conversations, mostly on Dutch trains. Today, however, I heard people laughing into their phones: “He shook my hand!” “She’s so lovely!” “It’s a mild day!” And my personal favorite: “Don’t forget to transfer money!”

The lady in front of me called her mom, then turned to the agent patrolling us and said, “My mum wasn’t impressed. Who can I call who will be impressed?” I then called my husband and told him I’d shaken hands with the prince, just to hear my own Prince Charming reply, “Can I get back to work now?”

And Kate, when she passed by, she said in a very posh accent, “Oh, there’s so many hands.” And I thought, it gets worse, sweetie.

The Asian students were the most excited, clicking away on their i-Phones. But the American students, especially the women, made the most noise. One Scottish woman said, “I’m here because I worshipped his mother.” That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it? The Diana cult continues. Right down to the sapphire ring.

So where does that leave us? With the press, and with a future king and queen. Just look at the wistfulness on the faces of the girls here. Don’t we all just long for a fairytale ending?

An hour later I was back in bed with my hot toddy. You have to love a country where you shake the hand of a prince one moment and the next, you can buy Bunnahabhain Islay whisky–in a supermarket.

Long live the queen.

Hemayel with me and feeling nervous about my husband at sea off the coast of North Africa, after an extremely productive weekend, I knew I had to get out. Oot an aboot, as the Scots say. Or, as my previous posts will explain, into the muckle furth.

My destination: a nature reserve 10 miles from the place where 19 Norwegian white-tailed (sea) eagles were released this past summer. This is part of a five-year reintroduction project for the East Coast of Scotland. These 19 bring the total to 64 sea eagles released in Fife.

Here’s what happened: I read a book. No big surprise there, but I read the book when Daniel was a baby and the story has never let me go. It was about how the last native pair of sea eagles bred on the Isle of Skye in 1916, and then the species was extinct in the British Isles. But in the 70s an eagle made its way across the North Sea, able to survive the trek for the first time ever, thanks to modern oil rigs providing resting places in the middle of the sea. And in 1975, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) started bringing sea eagles to Mull and Skye. Now these great birds breed and thrive on the west coast of Scotland, but it would take decades before they could return to the eastern lowlands.

So over the next few years, another 20 chicks a year will be brought to East Scotland from Norway and released, until the total population reaches around 100. Each chick is fitted with radio tags so that they can be tracked for up to five years. That’s the age of eagles who breed.

Did you know that sea eagles are monogamous?

Anyway, I had read on the RSPB bird blog (yes, there is such a thing) that the young eagles had taken to roosting on Castle Island in Loch Leven. Although the 65 roam all along the eastern coast, this seemed a better place than most to chance a sighting.

By the way, little piece of Scottish history here: the castle on Castle Island was built around 1300 and is the same castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and forced to abdicate before her dramatic escape a year later. Anyway . . .

So I walked along the loch (which means arm of the sea) and visited the blinds where I saw Whooper swans and Mute swans. My hiking boots squished through flooded farmland as I watched the mist lift and fall on hills darkened by winter heather. And I thought about Hemayel and my brother and my friend and my other friend’s father and his three children who will bury their grandfather on Thursday and the wind cut my cheeks, but I felt good. Then, as I headed back toward the car park, I heard them.

They sounded like puppies yelping. No way. The man at the visitor’s center had said the eagles weren’t around. I looked up into the layers of gray: gray water into gray sky, and saw two huge birds flying together, swooping down to the shoreline, then reeling up and splitting off. They seemed as big as herons, with their wingspan that can get up to eight feet. One landed and I returned to the nearest blind, my eyes glued to the spot. But I saw nothing more. An elderly man entered the wooden blind with a telescope.

“The white-tailed eagles, did I see them?” I asked. He grinned, “They roost on the island and love to attack the ducks along the beach. It’s two young ones who arrived in August, a large female and a small male. He has a blue badge.”

I saw them, I saw them. All my life I’ve wanted to see sea eagles. I was already determined to go to Skye later in the spring. But now I’ve seen them within an hour of my St Monans. I looked him up on the bird blog and the small male is named Norbett. This is what the view out of my door looks like at sunset. Maybe Norbett will visit me.

And now with my head and heart full of eagles, I remember Eric Liddel, the Flying Scotsman who ran the West Sands beach of St Andrews (where my desk at the library looks out upon) to train for the 1924 Olympics. There he won gold in an event not his own, after refusing to race on the sabbath. Afterwards he left for China as a missionary and died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1945. In 2008 the Chinese authorities revealed that when given the opportunity to leave the camp, he gave his place instead to a pregnant woman. His family had never known.

This is what I think: Eric wrote of death and young men like Hemayel and actually, for all of us, “Where does the power come from to see the race to its end? It comes from within. ‘They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.’”

Gone.

I cut short a holiday in the sun and flew home to The Netherlands Tuesday to attend a memorial service at Webster on Wednesday. The Minister Plenipotentiary of Curacao, Sheldry Osepa, attended and spoke of Hemayel’s book, Ansestro Preokupá (Worried Ancestors), how Hemayel had now become one of the ancestors inspiring us and he quoted Hemayel’s poem that tells the ancestor not to worry, we will now carry on his work. (This same poem appears at the end of the video below.)

It was a privilege to speak at this event. Below is the text of my talk. Friends and colleagues filled the room, as well as family members due to go to his funeral in Willemstad.

Today he is buried there.

I find I can’t sleep at night. The memorial service helped–to be with others who mourn, others who knew him–we drank whiskey and toasted him and told stories, and the next morning I thought, It’s over. But how could I think such a thing when I know full well that grief sneaks up on me, sideswipes me from dark corners, knocks me over and I am left gasping.

Now I am back in Scotland. Listening to the waves. My heart is so sore.

Hemayel Memorial talk at Webster University, Leiden, 2 February 2011

Bon dia. Hello in Hemayel’s Papiamento. This year I have been on study leave in Scotland and I never dreamed I would come back and see all of you again—for this reason.

The questions . . . I’m not even going there. Too much pain. Instead I want to thank all of you for all you have done to honor Hemayel, creating this great tribute to him, and coming here today.

I had the honor of teaching the writing class Hemayel was in for one entire year. Terms at Webster last 8 weeks, so this was unusual. For one year I learned from an exceptional class: Cesia, Rasheed, Jose Antonio, Catrina, Alex, and Hemayel. In January Anik, Eric and Taban joined us. They wrote essays about everything under the sun: past fears and future hopes. And in this way then, through his writing, I first came to know Hemayel.

Last February he asked  me if I would go to Curacao in October for the launch of his poetry book. I said, uh, ok, and then used up all my husband’s airmiles. By October I was already studying in Scotland, so I left from there and flew to Curacao. It was an amazing trip. I met his family and friends. A talented musician, Levi Silvanie had hooked up with Hemayel and together they were singing his poetry in clubs. Curacao had just become a new nation and I listened as these two men sang their country into being. These clubs—look at me, I’m the wrong color and the wrong age—but I went clubbing at night and became a sort-of Hemayel groupie. We visited groups of children where he and Levi listened and pulled creativity out of them. We visited a music group where Hemayel used to play the tjembe, and he spoke to the kids there, many of whom were being kept off the streets because of their involvement in music. I went with Hemayel and Levi to television and radio interviews. Throughout it all, Hemayel remained humble and a little overwhelmed. The launch of his book was a big event, with many of the founding families of Curacao, about whom Hemayel had written, present that evening. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of people who began slave rebellions and people who had put Papiamento on the map as a language all attended. Rosabelle came from Webster and recited poetry. Somehow I became the keynote speaker.

In my talk there I spoke about the importance of creating a space for listening to our young people, how Levi and Hemayel were singing this new country into being, and how Curacao may come from corazón, which means heart—and how Hemayel’s poetry was about listening to the heartbeat of this new country. I also expressed gratitude to everyone there for raising Hemayel into the kind, respectful, loving and intelligent man he had become. Today I express that same gratitude to you, here at Webster, for shaping him with your laughter and love and learning.

So last year he asked me to help him edit the English version of his poetry book. We met in the Paagman bookstore in The Hague several times. He wrote everything in Papiamento first, then translated it into English. Then we edited the English. By the end of the process he was writing in English.

I last met with Hemayel December 22, three days before he left for South Africa. It was one of those days when nothing was working in Holland because of the snow—few trains were running and the roads were a mess. Somehow he caught a train from Leiden to The Hague and I managed to drive in from Hoek van Holland and we met at Hollands Spoor. We had lunch at the Donor and talked for two hours about so much. About yoga and meditation and prayer. About my own experiences in Kwa-Zulu Natal, how important it is to touch and hold people with Aids because often they are outcast. We talked about his and my passion for all things having to do with young people in International Relations. We talked about Sierra Leone and Rwanda and Scotland. He told me of his hopes to get a masters in International Relations. He asked about all the members of my family. I told him I knew South Africa would resonate deep in his heart . . . I gave him four more notebooks so he’d have a place to put his emotions.

There are a few things I want to offer you today as means of comfort:

–Write out your grief. Those of us acquainted with grief know it hits like a knot of emotion. Anger and denial all tied up tight. A Zen master said that one death feels like 10,000. Give it a place and write it out, this way the emotions unravel and we may heal.

–And this: today we have heard how special Hemayel was, but you, each and every one, we are special for the knowing of him. In honor of his life, live your lives to the fullest, do all he hoped for: grab education and squeeze as much learning out of it as you can, resolve to end corruption, become politicians and advisers and teachers and poets, live and love and laugh and learn—for Hemayel. And know this, each one of you has as much potential and passion and promise as Hemayel. Reach deep, as he did, and become all you are meant to. Yes, he was exceptional, but so are each and every one of you. Honor his memory by facing your own fears, and do it—whatever it is—anyway. That we would do all to the best of our ability, that we would go for it and realize our full potential, that is how we honor Hemayel.

–Another thing: tell Hemayel stories. My favorite is during one of the crazy student barbecues at my house. It was 2 a.m. and they were jamming in my home. It was a typical Webster moment with a Pole, a Canadian, an Iranian and Hemayel, as he turned my coffee table into a tjembe and they composed a song in . . . wait for it . . . Farsi.

–Choose the one thing you loved most about him, and determine to keep that alive. Maybe it was playing pool badly, maybe it was his way of calling people up to stay in contact, maybe it was his urge to write out his heart. Maybe it was his smile.

–Lastly, create a space for listening, to others, to our young people, but most of all, listen to your own heart. He lives on in our hearts—if we listen there . . . we hear him still.

You can click on hemayelmartina.com to learn more about this extraordinary young man and leave a message of sympathy.

It seems furth can mean several things: non-Scottish, beyond The Border, away from, out, outside of, to the outside. For example, when something is furth of Scotland, it is outside of Scotland.

But I’m also thinking about the words further and furthest which often get mixed up with their cousins farther and farthest. The difference, of course, being that further means to a greater degree, and farther refers to length or distance.

But it seems that furth can also mean out of doors, in a state of deviation from, and honestly, as in without concealment of the truth. To be furth-bering is to support. and furthfilling is fulfilling. To furth-run is to expire. Furthy not only means frank, but also affable, and furthiness is an “excess of frankness, approaching to giddiness in the female character.” Hmm. But the absolute best word based on furth is furthsett which means conveying the idea of splendour.

This means that a furthsetter (which can mean publisher or author) is someone who conveys the idea of splendour. Which brings me to the photos for this post. They are new infrared images of the Andromeda Galaxy. To read the BBC story about the telescopes ran by the European Space Agency, click here. And that’s my furthsett contribution to your day.

So if one of the many meanings of furth is beyond, and firth means sheltered place or arm of the sea, what does the title of this post mean?

Where are we now?

Lastly, here is my favorite scene by a different kind of firth, yet another illustration of how words and languages exchange splendour across a universe, this one called the human heart.

After three weeks in snowy Holland I returned to Scotland to find . . . more snow. And so the snow story continues. Pictured here is the famous Old Course at St Andrews. During my last golf lesson before the holidays, we used yellow balls so we could see them in the snow. I have learned that the Scots never, ever complain about the weather. I might have made some comment to our Scottish instructor about how the M8 highway connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh was closed, and both airports in those cities were closed–all due to the snow–but that at St Andrews the golf lessons must go on. He looked at me rather oddly, while my fellow students from China, Germany, and Canada nodded and smiled at me.

You can learn a lot about about what is important to a culture from its language. In Dutch, for example, there are many different words for canal. And for ice. And for the moods of the sea. There is an urban legend that the Inuit have many terms for snow. I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve been boning up on my Scottish, and it seems like the Scots have an inordinately large number of words for describing the outdoors. For example, the word frog means to snow or sleet at intervals. They have a word for this. What does this say about Scottish culture? That the outdoors plays an important part in Scottish life? This, and the freezing temperatures that no one complains about might explain the origins of whiskey. But that’s another post all together. On to our language lesson.

As we learned in a previous post, neuk means hook. If you want to know what it means in Dutch, then watch the Robin Williams video at the end of that post. It could also be that this is an important word in the Dutch vocabulary, as well.

In any case, today I’d like to look at another Scottish f-word: furth. The muckle furth means the open air. And muckle means great. To furtheyet means to pour out. Furthy means forward, frank, and unabashed. The Dutch might be described as furthy. To furthschaw is to manifest. And a furth setter is an author.

How cool is that? I’m a furth setter living on the Firth of Forth (and firth means sheltered place but also estuary), furtheyeting and furthschawing furthy words after I go for walks in the muckle furth. But I wonder, what does furth itself mean? As with all great questions, I haven’t found the answer yet.

Oh, but there’s an even better word: Gloming. Say it out loud, it rhymes with roaming. It’s what we grammar geeks call an onomatopoeia, or a type of word that sounds like the thing it is describing. Gloming means twilight. The gloamin-star is the evening star. The Scottish language seems to have several onomatopoeia: glock which means to gulp; gloff which is a sudden fright and glog which means slow. Glog also means a soft lump. Oh wait! And did you know what a gloy is? Not a glow-in-the-dark toy, but the withered blades stripped off from straw. How lovely is it that there is a word for such a thing?

One last definition . . . for the word golf: “A game in Scotland, in which hooked clubs are used for striking balls, stuffed very hard with feathers, from one hole to another.” So that’s what’s missing from my game, the feathers.

Now I’ll leave you with the gloming over St Andrews, and a sample of the Scottish language. See if you can recognize the text, and for those of you who know Dutch, note the many words the two languages have in common. That’s because of the fishing and the North Sea that both cultures share, a historical bridge between my two homes.

(Thanks to Tim who first introduced me to the mf-word as well as defining the f(o)urth dimension as time and the fifth as one of love, and to Ian who emailed me the words below.)

Wha is my Shepherd, weel I ken,
the Lord himsel’ is he;
He leads me whaur the girse is green,
an burnies quate that be.

Aft times I fain astray wad gang,
an wanner far awa;
He fins me oot, He pits me richt,
and brings me hame an a’.

Tho I pass through the gru’some cleugh,
fine weel I ken He is near,
His muckle crook will me defend,
sae I had nocht tae fear.

A’ comforts whilk a sheep could need,
his thoctfu’ care provides;
Tho wolves an dogs may prowl aboot,
in safety me He hides.

His guidness an his mercy baith,
nae doot will bide wi’ me;
While faulded on the fields o’ time
or a’ eternity.